Search

It is a challenge to develop microemulsions which can serve as nanoreactors for the synthesis of nanoparticles and chemical reactions at high temperature. In this work, a class of novel high temperature microemulsions consisting solely of ionic liquids have been designed and prepared for the first time. It is found that nanoscale droplets formed in the ionic liquid microemulsions can be maintained up to 200 °C, and the size distribution of the droplets can be easily tuned by selection of the ionic liquids and varying compositions of the systems. By using such microemulsions as nanoreactors, porous metals such as Pt have been prepared at 180 °C without using any purposely added reductant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Correction for 'An azobenzene-modified redox-active ionic liquid electrolyte for supercapacitors' by Yuhua Zhao et al., Chem. Commun., 2022, https://doi.org/10.1039/d2cc04081f. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ionic liquids (ILs) have many potential applications in the chemical industry. In order to understand ILs, their molecular details have been extensively investigated. Intuitively, electrostatic forces are solely important in ILs. However, experiments and calculations have provided strong evidence for the existence of H-bonds in ILs and their roles in the properties and applications of ILs. As a structure-directing force, H-bonds are responsible for ionic pairing, stacking and self-assembling. Their geometric structure, interaction energy and electronic configuration in the ion-pairs of imidazolium-based ILs and protic ionic liquids (PILs) show a great number of differences compared to conventional H-bonds. In particular, their cooperation with electrostatic, dispersion and π interactions embodies the physical nature of H-bonds in ILs, which anomalously influences their properties, leading to a decrease in their melting points and viscosities and thus fluidizing them. Using ILs as catalysts and solvents, many reactions can be activated by the presence of H-bonds, which reduce the reaction barriers and stabilize the transition states. In the dissolution of lignocellulosic biomass by ILs, H-bonds exhibit a most important role in disrupting the H-bonding network of cellulose and controlling microscopic ordering into domains. In this article, a critical review is presented regarding the structural features of H-bonds in ILs and PILs, the correlation between H-bonds and the properties of ILs, and the roles of H-bonds in typical reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It was found for the first time that single tail ionic liquid (IL) surfactants, 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium bromides [Cnmim]Br (n = 10, 12, 14), form unilamellar vesicles in aqueous solutions without any additives. With the increase in IL concentrations, the self-assembly of these ILs can transfer from spherical micelles to rodlike micelles and then to vesicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A facile approach was developed to prepare well-dispersed ionic liquid functionalized graphene composites using 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium 2-amino-3-mercaptopropionic acid salt ionic liquid as a reducing reagent and functionalization reagent. The resulting material showed excellent electrochemical activity to catechol and hydroquinone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new concept of “tunable ionic liquid (IL)–H2O interfacial synthesis” is proposed and used practically in the synthesis of Ag films with various morphologies at the IL–H2O interface by employing ILs with different anions and/or different alkyl chain lengths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]