Ionic Liquids on Demand in Continuous Flow

Abstract

We report on the development of an alternative protocol for the facile, solvent-free synthesis of various novel imidazolium-based ionic liquids (ILs) that affords highly pure products without the necessity of subsequent purification steps. The continuous approach is based on the combination of HPLC pumps with a micromixer and a capillary residence tube. Our system provides a high degree of control over the alkylation reactions due to a high surface-to-volume ratio and superior heat and mass transport. Within the scope of our studies, we focused on ionic liquids containing differently substituted phenyl rings and characterized these compounds with respect to further use for direct application or subsequent reaction sequences. Scale-up can conveniently be achieved by operating several reactors with high continuous throughput in parallel.