Electrocapillarity is the basis of modern electrowetting. And room temperature ionic liquids, an increasingly important set of electrolytes and organic salts that are liquid at room temperature, are considered a novel class of electrowetting agents, because of non-significant vapor pressure, nonflammability, good thermal stability, and a wide useable temperature range. In this paper, a simple device has been fabricated to investigate the electrocapillarity of ionic liquids. It shows attractive features involving wide operating temperature and in particular high stability, fast response and good reversibility at high temperatures. Besides, electrocapillarity of ionic liquids is strongly dependent on power supply frequency. In particular, high frequency, stable, reversible and wide height of rise modulations were obtained. The phenomenon of ionic liquids-based electrocapillarity was found to be affected by the structure and physicochemical properties of ionic liquids such as density, surface tension, alkyl carbon chain length of cation, type of the anion, etc., and the efficiency could be further improved through optimal choice of ambient phase or rational design and synthesis of ionic liquids.

Keywords: Electrocapillarity, ionic liquids, height of rise, response time, high temperature, AC electric fields

★★★☆☆ Hu XD,Zhang SG,Qu C,et al. Electrically Switchable Capillarity Of Ionic Liquids[J]. J. Adhesion Sci. Technol.,2011,0:1-10.

We demonstrated an infrared variable focus ionic liquids lens using electrowetting, which could overcome the problems caused by use of water, e.g., evaporation and poor thermostability, while keeping good optical transparency in visible light and near-infrared region. Besides, the type of lens (convex or concave) could be tuned by applied voltage or refractive index of ILs used, and the transmittance was measured to exceed 90% over the spectrum of visible light and near-infrared. We believe this infrared variable focus ionic liquids lens has a great application prospect in both visible light and infrared image systems.

★★★☆☆ Hu XD,Zhang SG,Liu Y,et al. Electrowetting Based Infrared Lens Using Ionic Liquids[J]. Appl. Phys. Lett.,2011,99:213505(1-3).

A series of new ionic liquids, based on dialkoxy-functionalized quaternary ammonium cations {side chains: 1 = CH3, 1O1 = CH3OCH2, 1O2 =CH3OC2H4, 2O2 = C2H5OC2H4; cations: [N11,1O1,1O2], [N11,1O1,2O2], [N11,1O2,1O2], [N11,1O2,2O2] and [N11,2O2,2O2]}, with BF4 , (CF3SO2)2N (NTf2) and CH3CO2  (OAc) as counteranions, have been prepared and characterized. Their basic properties, such as spectroscopic characteristics, melting point, glass transition temperature, thermal stability, electrochemical window, density, refractive index, viscosity and conductivity, were measured and comparatively studied. The incorporation of two flexible alkoxy chains makes the quaternary ammonium salts highly qualified to be low-viscous and high-conductive room temperature ILs, and even some of them have significantly better fluidity than the popular imidazolium ILs with a similar molecular weight, e.g. [N11,1O1,2O2]BF4 (151 cP and 2.11 mS cm1, Mw: 249) vs. [HMIm]BF4 (220 cP and 1.2 mS cm1, Mw: 256) at 25 ℃. The electrochemical windows of these ILs were evaluated up to 5.5 V. In addition, the dialkoxy OAc ILs were found to have excellent solvent power for cellulose under mild conditions, e.g. a solution of 18 wt% microcrystalline cellulose in [N11,2O2,2O2]OAc at 80 ℃. By precipitation with water, the dissolved cellulose (I crystal structure) was regenerated as nanosized cellulose II particles with increased surface area and decreased crystallinity, determined by FE-SEM and XRD.

★★★☆☆ NewJ. Chem., 2011, 35, 1596–1606

This work presents ionic liquid based variable focus lenses using electrowetting, which exhibit excellent performance over a conventional saline based lens such as good tolerance of sharp temperature variation, wide operating temperature range (which is up to 100 ℃) and in particular high stability at high temperatures.

★★★☆☆ Hu XD,Zhang SG,Qu C,et al. Ionic Liquid Based Variable Focus Lenses[J]. Soft Matter,2011,7:5941–5943.

Quinolizinium ionic liquids (salts) featuring an unbranched cation core have been prepared, characterized and found to show extremely high fluorescence quantum yields in solution (Ff > 99%, lem near 334 nm) and bright cyan fluorescence in molten state (lem near 465 nm).

★★★☆☆ J. Mater. Chem., 2011, 21, 8979

A new class of liquid fluorescent organic salts was designed and prepared through via a strategy of ionic liquidization. These new ionic liquid materials exhibited strong green fluorescence and remarkable solvent-dependent photoluminescence under UV irradiation. Their physicochemical properties, especially the fluorescent behaviour, were studied intensively.

★★★☆☆ Zhang QH,Yang BQ,Zhang SG,et al. Ionic Liquidized-naphthalenesulfonamide: Successful Fabrication Of Liquid Fluorescent Materials[J]. J. Mater. Chem.,2011,21:16335-16338.

One kind of novel ionic liquids (ILs) with a tertiary amino moiety and a quaternary ammonium group were synthesized and identified by FT-IR, 1H and 13C NMR. The elemental chemical state and basicity of ILs were determined by XPS and Hammett indicator method, respectively. Then the catalytic performance of these bifunctional catalysts was investigated in one-step synthesis of dimethyl carbonate (DMC) from ethylene oxide (EO), carbon dioxide and methanol. The best catalytic performance with 99% EO conversion and a maximum of 74% DMC selectivity was obtained using [N111,6N11]I as catalyst under optimized reaction conditions. And the catalyst could be reused for several times. Normally, stronger basicity could be obtained by altering the anions with different nucleophilicity in ILs and a better catalytic activity could be achieved correspondingly. A mechanism that both the ring opening of epoxide through nucleophilic attacks and the transesterification play an important role in the reaction was proposed based on experimental results.

Keywords Ionic liquid  Bi-functional  One-step synthesis  Dimethyl carbonate  Carbon dioxide

★★★☆☆ Catal Lett (2011) 141:339–346

An iron oxide immobilized palladium catalyst was prepared for the N-alkylation of amines with alcohols under base and organic ligand free conditions. Applying the optimized reaction conditions, the coupling reactions of amines and alcohols with various structures could be realized with up to 99% isolated yields. The catalysts were studied by XRD, BET, and XPS and the mechanism was studied by DFT calculations.

Keywords: Palladium; Alkylation; Alcohol; Amine

★★★★☆ Zhang Y,Qi XJ,Cui XJ,et al. Palladium Catalyzed N-alkylation Of Amines With Alcohols[J]. Tetrahedron Letters,2011,52:1334-1338.

Complicated and expensive organic ligands are normally essential in fine chemical synthesis at preparative or industrial levels. The synthesis of fine chemicals by using heterogeneous catalyst systems without additive organic ligand is highly desirable but severely limited due to their poor generality and rigorous reaction conditions. Here, we show the results of carbon–nitrogen or carbon–carbonbond formation catalyzed by an Ag/Mo hybrid material with specific Ag6Mo10O33 crystal structure. 48 nitrogen-or oxygen-containing compounds, that is, amines, carboxamides, sulfonamides, and ketones, were successfully synthesized through a borrowing-hydrogen mechanism. Up to 99% isolated yields were obtained under relatively mild conditions without additive organic ligand. The catalytic process shows promise for the efficient and economic synthesis of amine, carboxamide, sulfonamide, and ketone derivatives because of the simplicity of the system and ease of operation.

Keywords: Ag/Mo · amines · carboxamides · ketones · sulfonamides

★★★★☆ Cui XJ,Zhang Y,Shi F,et al. Organic Ligand-free Alkylation Of Amines, Carboxamides, Sulfonamides,and Ketones By Using Alcohols Catalyzed By Heterogeneous Ag/mo Oxides[J]. Chem. Eur. J.,2011,17:1021-1028.

★★★★☆ Cui XJ,Zhang Y,Shi F,et al. Ruthenium-catalyzed Nitro And Nitrile Compounds Coupling With Alcohols: Alternative Route For N-substituted Amine Synthesis[J]. Chem. Eur. J.,2011,17:2587-2591.