Stimuli Responsive Ionic Liquid Based Low Molecular Weight Gelators for Biological and Environmental Applications

Abstract

liquids (ILs) have been at the cutting edge of the most promising science in newlinerecent times due to its technological brilliance and unique properties, which put them newlineabove the rest of the compounds. They are commonly defined as a class of salts newlinecomposed of discrete cations and anions with a oC. They are pertinent newlineadvanced materials with unprecedented physicochemical properties such as negligible newlinevapor pressure, wide liquid range, excellent thermal stability, wide electrochemical newlinepotential window, superb solubility for a wide range of organic, inorganic, newlineorganometallic, and biological substances. These properties address the growing needs of newlinethem in several resources as well as in various industries not limited to energy, newlinepharmaceuticals, and process chemicals to cite a few. Among all of these properties, their newlineability to fine-tune their properties through merely changing the constituting cations newlineand/or anions are the most promising as they allow the material scientists and newlinetechnologists to tailor-made the structures and so their applications. The tunability of ILs newlineallows for functional diversity leading to compounds with a myriad of functional newlinecapabilities including hydrophilic to hydrophobic, electrolytic to amphiphilic, toxic to newlinenon-toxic, biodegradable to non-biodegradable, highly viscous to lowest viscous, highly newlinethermally stable to thermally unstable, non-polar to highly polar and functionalized to newlinenon-functionalized. These ILs are also called as Task-Specific or tailor-made ILs. The newlineaddition of an ion-tethered functional group onto IL structures has generated a new newlinesubclass of ILs, known as functionalized ILs. newlineStimuli-responsive functionalized ionic liquids that have wide applications in the newlinebiological and environmental field. Various properties are to be tailored based on the size newlineand shape of the aggregates. Aggregate structures such as spherical micelles, cylinder newlinemicelles, vesicle, and hydrogels are formed by ILBSs in aqueous solution are widely used newlineinsolubilizing and emulsifying agents, detergent,