Ionic Liquid-in-Oit Microemulsions

摘要

Room temperature ionic liquids (ILs) are an interesting class of tunable,designer solvents with essentially zero volatility.ILs are composed of sterically mismatched ions that hinder crystal formation;molecular structure can be used to tune physicochemical properties.An example IL employed here is l-butyl-3-methyl-imidazolium tetrafluoroborate [bmim][BF_4] (referred to as IL).Solvation properties of ILs are comparable with those of highly polar solvents,and they have already found use in synthesis and catalytic reactions.Despite these features,solubility limitations for apolar solutes remain,which could be overcome by incorporation of hydrocarbon domains provided by normal micelles or formation of ionic liquid-in-oil (IL-O) microemulsions.The significance is that nanostructured surfactant assemblies would provide hydro-phobic or hydrophilic nanodomains,thereby expanding potential uses of ILs as reaction and separation or extraction media.