Ionic liquids for and by analytical Spectroscopy

In this mini-review we highlight two aspects of ionic liquids that to date have either no or limited studies. They are (1) exploitation of unique features of ionic liquids to develop novel spectroscopic methods and (2) development of novel spectroscopic methods, for the sensitive and accurate determination of thermal physical properties of ionic liquids. In the first category, we will describe several novel methods which were developed utilizing unique properties of ionic liquids for measurements which are not possible otherwise. They include the sensitive and accurate method to determine enantiomeric compositions of a variety of pharmaceutical products with different size, shape, and functional groups. This method is based on the use of a chiral IL which serves both as a solvent and also as a chiral selector. Ionic liquids have also been successfully used to substantially enhance the sensitivity of thermal lens measurements. In the second category, we will describe recent development in which transient grating technique and thermal lens technique have been successfully used for the sensitive, accurate, nondestructive determination of thermal physical properties of ILs.