Twenty years ago, research involving ionic liquids was a minor field of interest. Only a few chemists and even fewer engineers were interested in salts with melting points near room temperature. In April 2000, the first NATO advanced research workshop on ionic liquids was held in Heraklion, Crete. The conference was the first international meeting devoted to ionic liquids and attracted most of the active researchers at that time. Following that meeting, activity in the field began to flourish and the first books and international conferences devoted to ionic liquids began to appear. Today, over 75,000 publications and 12,000 patents have been published involving ionic liquids! This symposium series book based on the ACS conference, Ionic Liquids: Current State and Future Directions held in San Diego, California in 2016 attempts to propel the field forward by bringing together contributions from some of the foremost researchers on ionic liquids. Recent products and new large-scale processes using ionic liquids, both in operation and being announced, indicate that an exciting new chapter in this field is about to begin. This introductory chapter summarizes some of the history, applications, conferences, books, databases, issues related to data quality and toxicity for researchers working in the field of ionic liquids and includes an overview for each proceeding chapter with an introduction about the authors.
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