Getting started with ionic liquids

As a starter, I suggest the articles in the American Chemical Society's INTERFACE of Spring 2007 (Vol. 16, No. 1). After beginning with the one-page introduction Liquid Salts: A Brief Introduction you want to get an answer to the question you have always asked: What's an Ionic Liquid? Then, it's time for applications: An overview is given in Electrochemical Applications of Room-Temperature Ionic Liquids . Aspects of the synthetic design with ILs are outlined in Applications of Ionic Liquids in Synthesis and Catalysis . Research and applications of ILs in surface science and nanotechnology are reviewed in Air and water stable ionic liquids in physical chemistry .

If you want to read about the green aspect of ILs, chapter 5 "Ionic Liquids: 'Designer' Solvents for Green Chemistry" by Plechkova and Seddon in the book "Methods and Reagents for Green Chemistry - An Introduction" (edited by Tundo, Perosa and Zecchini, Wiley-Interscience, 2007) is a good start. The journals Green Chemistry and ChemSusChem provide a rich source for articles about ILs and sustainable chemistry topics.

Benefits and risks of ILs have to be assessed depending on their usage and application and based on their properties and behavior. The chemical structure and physicochemical properties of specific ILs are accessible through the NIST Ionic Liquids Database ILThermo and my Chemical Property Viewer .