1.3- dialkylimidazolium

Commonly used ionic liquids are N-alkylpyridinium, N,N -dialkylimidazolium, alkylammonium and alkylphosphonium salts. 

Room-temperature ionic liquids, salts with A,A-dialkylimidazolium cations in synthesis and catalysis 99CRV2071. 

We had no good way to predict if they would be liquid, but we were lucky that many were. The class of cations that were the most attractive candidates was that of the dialkylimidazolium salts, and our particular favorite was l-ethyl-3-methylimid-azolium [EMIM]. [EMIMJCl mixed with AICI3 made ionic liquids with melting temperatures below room temperature over a wide range of compositions [8]. We determined chemical and physical properties once again, and demonstrated some new battery concepts based on this well behaved new electrolyte. We and others also tried some organic reactions, such as Eriedel-Crafts chemistry, and found the ionic liquids to be excellent both as solvents and as catalysts [9]. It appeared to act like acetonitrile, except that is was totally ionic and nonvolatile. 

This chapter will concentrate on the preparation of ionic liquids based on 1,3-dialkylimidazolium cations, as these have dominated the area over the last twenty... 

Scheme 5.3-2 Formation of carbene complexes by dialkylimidazolium salt deprotonation.

Despite all the advantages of this process, one main limitation is the continuous catalyst carry-over by the products, with the need to deactivate it and to dispose of wastes. One way to optimize catalyst consumption and waste disposal was to operate the reaction in a biphasic system. The first difficulty was to choose a good solvent. N,N -Dialkylimidazolium chloroaluminate ionic liquids proved to be the best candidates. These can easily be prepared on an industrial scale, are liquid at the reaction temperature, and are very poorly miscible with the products. They play the roles both of the catalyst solvent and of the co-catalyst, and their Lewis acidities can be adjusted to obtain the best performances. The solubility of butene in these solvents is high enough to stabilize the active nickel species (Table 5.3-3), the nickel... 

In recent years ionic liquids have also been employed as media for reactions catalyzed both by isolated enzymes and by whole cells, and excellent reviews on this topic are already available [47]. Biocatalysis has been mainly conducted in those room-temperature ionic liquids that are composed of a 1,3-dialkylimidazolium or N-alkylpyridinium cation and a noncoordinating anion [47aj. 

The cation in an ionic liquid typically is an organic nitrogen-based ion such as alkyl ammonium, alkyl pyridinium, or dialkylimidazolium, examples of which appear below. 

Room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs), such as those based on A,A-dialkylimidazolium ions, are gaining importance (Bradley, 1999). The ionic liquids do not evaporate easily and thus there are no noxious fumes. They are also non-inflammable. Ionic liquids dissolve catalysts that are insoluble in conventional organic chemicals. IFP France has developed these solvents for dimerization, hydrogenation, isomerization, and hydroformylation reactions without conventional solvents. For butene dimerization a commercial process exists. RTILs form biphasic systems with the catalyst in the RTIL phase, which is immiscible with the reactants and products. This system is capable of being extended to a list of organometallic catalysts. Industrial Friedel-Crafts reactions, such as acylations, have been conducted and a fragrance molecule tra.seolide has been produced in 99% yield (Bradley, 1999). 

Ionic liquids, being polar and ionic in character, couple to the MW irradiation very efficiently and therefore are ideal microwave absorbing candidates for expediting chemical reactions. An efficient preparation of the 1,3-dialkylimidazolium halides via microwave heating has been described by Varma et al. that reduces the reaction time from several hours to minutes and avoids the use of a large excess of alkyl ha-lides/organic solvents as the reaction medium (Scheme 6.56) [26-28]. 

The preparation of 1,3-dialkylimidazolium halides by conventional heating in solvent under reflux requires several hours to afford reasonable yields and also uses a large excess of alkyl halides and/or organic solvents as the reaction medium. To circumvent these problems Varma and coworkers [106] investigated the preparation of a series of ionic liquids 72 (Scheme 8.74), using microwave irradiation as the energy source, by simple exposure of neat reactants, in open containers, to microwaves by use of an unmodified household MW oven (240 W). 

Many ionic liquids are based on N,N-dialkylimidazolium cations (BMI) which form salts that exist as liquids at, or below, room temperature. Their properties are also influenced by the nature of the anion e. g. BF T PFg. The C-2(H) in imidazole is fairly labile but the C-4(H) and the C-5(H) are less so. Under microwave-enhanced conditions it is therefore possible to introduce three deuterium atoms (Scheme 13.4). As hydrogen isotope exchange is a reversible reaction this means that the three deuterium atoms can be readily exchanged under microwave irradiation. For storage purpose it might be best to back-exchange the C-2(D) so that the 4,5-[2H2] isotopomer can be safely stored as the solid without any dangers of deuterium loss. The recently... 

The possibility of adjusting acidity/coordination properties opens up a wide range of possible interactions between the ionic liquid solvent and the dissolved transition metal complex. Depending on the acidity/coordination properties of the anion and on the reactivity of the cation (the possibility of carbene ligand formation from 1,3-dialkylimidazolium salts is of particular importance here [37]), the ionic liquid can be regarded as an innocent solvent, as a ligand precursor, as a co-catalyst or as the catalyst itself. 

The physical properties of ionic liquids have been extensively studied and some trends are beginning to emerge. In particular, ionic liquids based on 1,3-dialkylimidazolium cations have been investigated in detail, partly due the their wide use as solvents to conduct synthesis and catalysis. The attraction of the imidazolium cation in synthetic applications is because the two substituent groups can be varied to modify the properties of the solvent. For example, Table 4.1... 

Aluminum alkyl, 27 236 Aluminum chloride, 27 250 Aluminum chloride-1,3-dialkylimidazolium chloride catalyst system, 42 495—496 Aluminum oxide, 27 268, 269, 32 57-58, 34 195-197... 

Imidazolium-based ionic liquids (ILs) have been used extensively as media for the formation and stabilization of transition-metal nanoparticles [14—17]. These 1,3-dialkylimidazolium salts (Figure 15.3) possess very interesting properhes they have a very low vapor pressure, they are nonflammable, have high thermal and electrochemical stabilities, and display different solubilities in organic solvents [18-20]. 

The D/H exchange occurred mainly after complete consumption of the alkene, and no D-incorporated alkane was detected, which indicated that the coordinated NHC was easily displaced by the alkene and that these carbenes were less strongly bounded to the metal surface than was seen with mononuclear metal compounds [28]. These results strongly suggested that the imidazolium cations reacted with the nanoparticle surface preferentially as aggregates of the type [(DAI) (X) ] [(DAI) e (X)J" (where DAI is the 1,3-dialkylimidazolium cation and X the anion), rather than as isolated imidazolium cations. 

Heretofore, ionic liquids incorporating the 1,3-dialkylimidazolium cation have been preferred as they interact weakly with the anions and are more thermally stable than the quaternary ammonium cations. Recently, the physical properties of 1,2,3,4-tetraalkylimidazolium- and 1,3-dialkylimidazolium-containing ionic liquids in combination with various hydrophobic and hydrophilic anions have been systematically investigated (36,41). The melting point, thermal stability, density, viscosity, and other physical properties have been correlated with alkyl chain length of the imidazolium cation and the nature of the anion. The anion mainly determines water miscibility and has the most dramatic effect on the properties. An increase in the alkyl chain length of the cations from butyl to octyl, for example, increases the hydrophobicity and viscosity of the ionic liquid, whereas densities and surface tension values decrease, as expected. 

The cations in ionic liquids are generally bulky monovalent organics. The typical cations of ionic liquids, not including the familiar alkylammonium and alkylphosphonium ions, are shown in Fig. 2. It is primarily the cations, which account for the low melting points of ionic liquids. The dialkylimidazolium ions, such as 1-butyl-3-methyl imidazolium [BMIM], have been widely investigated because low-melting ionic liquids can be made readily from such cations and because of their thermal and chemical stability. 

The stability of dialkylimidazolium cation-containing ionic liquids can be a problem even at moderate temperatures in the presence of some reagents or catalysts. For example, when CsF and KF were used in the ionic liquid [BMIM]PFg to perform a halogen exchange reaction in an attempt to replace Br from bromo-carbons with F , it was found that alkyl elimination from the [BMIM] cation took place, forming methyl imidazole, 1-butene, 1-fluorobutane, and other unidentified products at 150°C overnight 69). The fluoride ion acted as a base that promotes elimination or substitution processes. 

Although such catalyst systems are known to have rather high productivities for the reaction, the addition of several equivalents of 1,3-dialkylimidazolium salts per equivalent of palladium leads to complete deactivation of the catalyst, which was attributed to the formation of highly stable palladium imidazolylidene complexes (Scheme 18). 

The cations of the ionic liquid include organic and inorganic cations. Examples of cations include dialkylimidazolium ion, tetra-alkylphosphonium ion, etc. and these cations can be associated with a number of different anions (Fig. 1). The anion includes organic and inorganic anions such as PFg, CF3S03, CF3C00, etc. and Lewis acids such as AlCU", GaC, etc. 

Monophasic systems in which the ionic liquid acts as both the solvent and the catalyst, e.g. dialkylimidazolium chloroaluminates as Friedel-Crafts catalysts (see later). 

The Heck reaction is a C-C coupling reaction where an unsaturated hydrocarbon or arene halide/triflate/sulfonate reacts with an alkene in presence of a base and Pd(0) catalyst so as to form a substituted alkene. Kaufmann et al. showed that the Heck reaction carried out in presence of ILs such as tetra-alkyl ammonium and phosphonium salts without the phosphine ligands, resulted in high yields of product. They attributed the activity to the stabilizing effect of ammonium and phosphonium salts on Pd(0) species. Carmichael et al. used ionic liquids containing either A,A -dialkylimidazolium and A-alkylpyridinium cations with anions such as halide, hexafluorophosphate or tetrafiuoroborate to carry out reactions of aryl halide and benzoic anhydride with ethyl and butyl acrylates in presence of Pd catalyst. An example of iodobenzene reacting with ethyl acrylate to give trans-et vy cinnamate is shown in Scheme 14. 

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