Synthetic Methodologies for Supported Ionic Liquid Materials

Supported ionic liquid (IL) materials consist of at least two building blocks; the support material and the IL film dispersed onto it. If the film consists of multilayers of IL ions, the bulk phase properties of the IL will govern the physicochemical behavior of the film. For this reason, this case can be termed as supported ionic liquid phase (SILP) concept. The majority of supports used in SILP catalysis are up-to-date commercially available porous silica gels with a moderate-to-high surface area. A number of synthetic methodologies have been developed in order to synthesize SILP and solid catalyst with ionic liquid layer (SCILL)-type materials. The simplest of these methods relies on physisorption in order to generate the material. Various techniques have been developed to disperse the IL evenly onto the support's surface. Grafting of functionalized IL fragments can be achieved using traditional sol-gel synthesis.