School of Chemistry
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Recognition for Deep Thinking by Leicester Chemist
ChemComm, one of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Flagship journals is celebrating 60 years of publications and has an online collection highlighting 60 pioneering historic papers.
We are delighted that two seminal pieces of research by Professor Andy Abbott and co-workers has been included in this collection as one of the most influential scientific contributions of the last 60 years. The first paper, Preparation of novel, moisture-stable, Lewis-acidic ionic liquids containing quaternary ammonium salts with functional side chains, describes the properties of a range of novel molten salts. Meanwhile, Novel solvent properties of choline chloride/urea mixtures reports the first example of a deep eutectic solvent, a special class of ionic liquid discovered here in Leicester. This discovery resulted in establishment of a new field of research that has spawned over 63,000 papers!
The now famous “two solids make a liquid” concept has found application in natural product extraction, pharmaceutical formulation, metal plating, electropolishing, metal extraction, and catalysis to name just a few.
Congratulations Andy and your team!
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