Ionic Liquids as the Liquid Phase

A chiral ruthenium catalyst bearing BINAP-type ligands was used in ILs for enantioselective hydrogenation of prochiral a, -unsaturated acids followed by 

The hydrogenation of C02 in the presence of amines to give dialkylformamides has been carried out directly in an IL/scC02 system. In this case, the ionic liquid was shown to play a dual role [74]. It is an effective solvent for the ruthenium phosphine catalyst and at the same time allows a distinct phase distribution of the polar carbamate intermediates and the less polar products formed during the conversion of C02. As a result, the selectivity of the reaction can be increased over conditions where scC02 is used as the sole reaction medium. 

A further example of a reaction which may be optimised in IL/scC02 by selection of the appropriate anion for the IL is catalytic enantioselective hydrovinylation, a synthetically interesting and truly atom economic C-C bond forming reaction [77-79]. The nickel complex below has been developed by Wilke and co-workers as precursor for a highly active and enantioselective catalyst for this process. 

This complex is not the actual catalyst for the hydrovinylation, but needs to be activated in the presence of a suitable co-catalyst. The role of this additive is to abstract the chloride ion from the nickel centre to generate a cationic allyl complex that further converts to the catalytically active nickel hydride species. In conventional solvents this is typically achieved using strong Lewis acids such as Et2AlCl. Alternatively, sodium or lithium salts of non-coordinating anions such as tetrakis-[3,5-bis(trifluoromethyl)phenyl]borate (BARF) can be used to activate hydrovinylation 

Attempts to recycle the catalyst-containing IL solution after removing the product by C02 extraction were again frustrated by the instability of the nickel species. It was 

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