KCS

Room-temperature ionic liquids (RTILs), also known as liquid organic, molten, or fused salts, are a class of nonmolecular ionic solvents with low melting points. Most common RTILs are composed of unsymmetrically substituted nitrogen-containing cations (e.g., imidazole, pyrrolideine, pyridine) with inorganic anions (e.g., C1ˉ, PF₆ˉ, BF₄ˉ).  ILs are also interesting because of their other useful and intriguing physicochemical properties.  In this presentation an overview of the structure and properties of ILs and a description of their expanding use in various applications in separations, chromatography and mass spectrometry will be given. A number of studies have appeared indicating that ILs have exceptional promise as stationary phases.  They have a dual nature selectivity in that they separate nonpolar molecules as would a nonpolar stationary phase and they separate polar molecules as would a polar stationary phase. Many ILs have exceptional thermal stability.  They are being used increasingly in a variety of applications including 2-D GC and enantiomeric separations. ILs have proven to be the best liquid Maldi MS matrix since we introduced them as such a few years ago.  The properties of ILs that make them effective will be discussed.  Further, the dications developed for high stability ILs have found another novel use in electrospray MS as a reagent for ultra sensitive anion analysis.