Synthesis and biological evaluation of fluoro-substituted cationic and neutral antibiotic NHC* silver derivatives of SBC3

•Thirteen new NHC-Ag complexes were successfully synthesized and characterized including 6 single crystal structures.•Antibacterial activity was established via Kirby-Bauer tests and demonstrated that our new compounds retained the promising activity reported in previous studies.•Stability of all compounds towards light and ambient conditions was increased due to fluorinated moieties and dimeric nature of our NHC-Ag complexes.