Ionic Liquids

Ionic Liquids are a peculiar and fascinating class of new chemicals with the potential to improve development in organic chemistry and chemical technology, stimulating progress in a lot of different research fields. The designing of chemical processes and products that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances has become a new focus in many aspects of pure and applied chemistry. In this context, Ionic Liquids are regarded as environmentally friendly substitutes for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) essentially because of their low vapour pressures and their specific advantage to act as solvent or catalyst.

WHAT'S SO SPECIAL ABOUT IONIC LIQUIDS?

Ionic Liquids are compounds consisting entirely of ionic species with an organic cation and an inorganic or organic anion. They have intrinsically useful properties such as high ionic conductivity, thermal stability (over 300 ºC), negligible vapour pressure and a large electrochemical window. Depending on the anion and substitute groups of the cation, these compounds can solubilize alcohols, alkyl halides, carbonyl compounds, supercritical CO2 (scC02) and also transition metal complexes. Simultaneously, they present a low miscibility in alkanes, dialkyl ethers and water.

APLICATIONS OF IONIC LIQUIDS

ORGANIC CHEMISTRY
The use of ionic liquids as a recyclable and environmentally benign medium has been attracting considerable attention for chemical transformations including non-catalytic reactions, biocatalytic and catalytic reactions in monophasic systems (both substract and catalyst dissolved in the ionic liquid, and sometimes the ionic liquid works like a catalyst itself), biphasic systems (with the catalyst dissolved in the ionic liquid and the substract/product in a second phase or vice versa) and triphasic systems( with an ionic liquid phase, an organic phase and an aqueous phase).
Reactions like oxidations, hydrogenations, hydroformylations, Heck reaction, olefin oligomerisation, Trost-Tsuji coupling, dihydroxylations and epoxidations among several others have been tried successfully using such systems.
• Organic synthesis
• Catalysis

ELECTROCHEMISTRY
• Electrolytes

ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
• Stationary phase for chromatography
• Matrices for MS

PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY
• Material with relatively unusual thermodynamic and stability properties.

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
Solute extraction and recovery using supported liquid membranes is recognized as one of the most promising membrane-based processes. The use of ionic liquids (RTILs) as an immobilized phase in a supporting membrane is particularly interesting due to the nonvolatile character of the RTILs and their solubility properties in the surrounding phases, which makes it possible to obtain very stable supported liquid membranes without any observable loss of the RTIL to the atmosphere or the contacting phases.
• Separation processes
• Extraction processes

BIOTECHNOLOGY
• Enzymes

ENERGY
• Fuel and solar cells
• Lubricants
• Batteries

MATERIALS
• Nanomaterials
• Liquid Crystals