Supported Ionic Liquids: A Versatile and Useful Class of Materials

Supported ionic liquids (SILs) represent a class of materials with peculiar properties and a huge potential regarding their possible applications in different fields of chemistry. Herein, we report our ongoing research about the use of SILs as support for organocatalysts, their role as catalysts themselves, and their application as support and stabilizers of palladium nanoparticles (PdNPs). The use of SILs based materials allowed achieving good results. Moreover, in some cases, after the functionalization of the catalytic species with an ion-tag moiety, a release and catch approach was employed in order to improve the catalytic activity and to facilitate the recovery of the hybrid system formed by the catalyst adsorbed onto SILs materials. All the reported examples demonstrate the versatility of such SILs materials, which can represent powerful tools able to exert a large number of functions.