The green catalysis group at the R&D Center for Green Chemistry and Catalysis of the Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics of the CAS has published a review on ionic liquid catalysis in Green Chemistry at the invitation of the journal. The article has become “the top ten accessed articles” of August and September respectively.

As a new kind of environmental-friendly medium, ionic liquids (ILs) have attracted much attention from the catalytic field since their discovery. Up till now, numerous articles and patents on IL catalysis have been published. IL catalysis has also been considered as the most promising field to achieve large scale application.

The review is a summary of the work on IL catalysis in recent years.It first introduces the advantages of ILs in green catalysis, and then summarizes the research state quo and problems of the four hot areas in IL catalysis, namely biomass conversion, catalytic production of fine chemicals in ILs, supported IL phase catalysis (SILPC) and Friedel–Crafts alkylations.Finally, the problems to be solved in IL catalysis and the outlook of ILs in catalysis are provided.

The review is of great significance to those engaging in ILs research and green catalysis.