Safer and Greener Catalysts – Design of High Performance, Biodegradable and Low Toxicity Ionic Liquids

Abstract

Molten salts which are ionic (i.e. a mixture of cation and anion) in nature and have a melting point below 100 °C are termed as Ionic liquids (ILs). [1] Preferably salts which are liquid at room temperature are called room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs). ILs have received great attention in the last couple of decades due to their unique properties such as low va‐ pour pressure, high thermal stability, recyclability, non-flammability, and control over the product distribution. [2,3] Due to the control over fugative emission; ILs can be a replace‐ ment for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which are commonly used as solvents in or‐ ganic processes. Since the first ionic liquid was reported, [4] there has been a large number of articles been published with different types of cations and anions. One can easily design 1018 possible structures of ILs by varying cations and anions. This makes them “designer” molecules. [5-9] These designed combinations have already been found useful in different fields of chemistry, such as organic chemistry, [10-14] electrochemistry, [15-19] analytical chemistry, [20-24] and biochemistry. [15,25]