## 1 Introduction  
Silver-containing compounds continue to attract academic attention for their antimicrobial properties [1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6; 7; 8] but also for the immense variety of its coordination polymers, [9] and sometimes the two coincide [10]. A recent review is optimistic of the future role of silver in medicine, [11] while clinical studies are still not of sufficient quality to judge the practical usefulness of different silver based wound healing materials, the most common medical application [12].  
The attractiveness lies in the low human toxicity of silver and silver ions, combined with the in-vitro antimicrobial properties that are on par, or better than conventional antibiotics. The difficulties lie in the yet sketchy knowledge of the mode(s) of action, [12] the variability of the Ag(I) coordination modes, and the solution chemistry that likely will be dominated by chlorine interactions, such as the precipitation and dissolution of AgCl(s), in biological fluids.  
Silver(I) ion, and its complexes as well as their nanoparticles, have been proven to have anti-inflammatory [7], antispection [13], and anti-cancer activities [14]. For example, silver(I) sulfadiazine is used for treating infections during burn wounds treatment but it has been observed that silver(I) sulfadiazine has major side effects such as slowing the rate of wound healing [15; 16]. In the literature, many Ag(I) complexes with \(N\)-heterocylic ligands that have significant anti-microbial actions were reported. The results disclosed that the complexes of silver(I)-N-heterocyles (e.g., pyridine, pyrimidine, pyridazine, pyrazine, pyrazole, phthalazine, quinoxaline, quinazoline, and tricyclic phenazine) have high anti-microbial activity towards several strains including _Pseudomonas aeruginosa_, _Candida albicans_, etc. [17; 18; 19; 20].  
The mechanism of action of the silver metal complexes as anti-microbial agent is multi-directional [21; 22; 23; 24]. The advantage of the different pathways of the activity of silver(I) may lead to a slowdown of the bacterial drug resistance development [21; 22; 23; 24]. One of the multi-directional activities is that silver can interact with the cell surface of the bacteria, which help it to penetrate into the cell, subsequently binding with the amino acid (thiol group in the cysteine as an example) in the DNA which interrupts the replication and transcription processes leading to death of bacteria [21; 22; 23; 24]. An alternative pathway is that silver(I) ion can induce reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, that are known to target nucleic acids, proteins, and lipids leading to the cell death via malfunction of these biomolecules.  
There is thus a good reason to continue to study the antimicrobial properties of Ag(I) compounds, while at the same time exploring their fascinating and diverse solid state and coordination chemistry [25]. In this paper we present a study of three well-known silver(I) complexes [26; 27; 28] with the closely related pyridine-type ligands pyridine-3-carboxaldehyde (also known as nicotinamidedehyde), 2-pyridone (keto form of 2-hydroxy-pyridine), and 3-hydroxypyridine (3-pyridinol), see Figure 1. Synthesis, characterizations, single crystal X-ray structures, and antimicrobial screening in comparison to 17 commercial antibiotics are also described. Moreover, network topology analysis [29; 30; 31] was applied to describe the structure of the synthesized complex with 2-pyridone. In addition, the intermolecular interactions such as hydrogen bonding, C-H... \(\pi\) interactions, \(\pi\)-\(\pi\) stacking, etc. play very crucial role in molecular packing of building blocks in the crystal. Hirshfeld calculations are important for quantifying these intermolecular interactions in the crystal [32; 33; 34; 35; 36; 37]. In this regard, Hirshfeld quantitative analysis for the three complexes was performed.  
Figure 1: The representative schematic presentation for the synthesis of the target complexes **1–3**.