Fridolin O. Sommer

Ionic liquids are highly charged compounds with increasing applications in material science. A universal approach to synthesize free-standing, vinylalkylimidazolium bromide-containing membranes with an adjustable thickness is presented. By the variation of alkyl side chains, membrane characteristics such as flux and mechanical properties can be adjusted. The simultaneous use of different ionic liquids (ILs) in the synthesis can also improve the membrane properties. In separation application, these charged materials allowed us to retain charged sugars, such as calcium gluconate, by up to 95%, while similar neutral compounds such as glucose passed the membrane. An analysis of the surface conditions using atomic force microscopy (AFM) confirmed the experimental data and explains the decreasing permeance and increased retention of the charged sugars.

Tandem‐catalyzed hydroaminomethylation is a useful tool for synthesizing linear amines from olefins and amines in an atom‐efficient manner. To enable the coupling of highly functionalized, hydrosoluble amines with non‐water‐soluble olefins, this reaction must be transferred to aqueous biphasic solvent systems. In this work, we systematically evaluate reaction conditions to provide a selective hydroaminomethylation of 1‐octene with diethanolamine as model substrates. Although water is both the condensation side product and the solvent, yields of 79% were achieved using a catalytic system consisting a rhodium precursor and a sulfonated diphosphine ligand. This approach was applied to other functionalized amines, proving this concept is a suitable tool for the catalytic alkylation of highly functionalized amines. magnified image

A key challenge in the synthesis of non-ionic surfactants is the opposite polarity of the substrates and the connected challenge of using homogeneous catalysis. We present the telomerisation of β-myrcene with N-methylglucamine to C20-N-alkylated polyols, which show surface activity. The use of aqueous solvent systems along with amphiphilic ligands bridges the polarity gap and generates high reactivities.