Ionothermal Materials Synthesis Using Unstable Deep-Eutectic Solvents as Template-Delivery Agents

摘要

The use of organic templates (also called structure-irectingagents) remains one of the most successful methods of preparing new inorganic materials.[1, 2] Many of the most important recent advances in porous solids in particulardepend on the clever use of organic species as templates to produce new zeolites,[3–5] transition-metal phosphates[6] oroxides,[7] and to make synthetic methods more efficient.[8]Ionothermal synthesis, where an ionic liquid is both the solvent and source of the template, provides opportunities to develop new synthetic routes that are based on different chemistry to traditional hydrothermal approaches.[9–12] Herein we describe the controlled use of deep-eutectic solvents (DESs) that are unstable at high temperatures as the media for ionothermal reactions. The organic template is not added to the reaction mixture in the normal way, but is delivered to the reaction by the breakdown of one of the components of the DES itself, demonstrating how the unique solvent properties of these ion quids can be harnessed to produce new types of solid.