SPP 1708:  Material Synthesis near Room Temperature

• Subject Area: Chemistry ; Materials Science and Engineering ; Thermal Engineering/Process Engineering
• Term: from 2014 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 237028221

Chemical synthesis of materials is facing enormous challenges: Energy turnaround for sustainability requires completely new materials with outstanding properties, on the one hand, while there is the imperative for resource-efficient use of raw materials and energy through more efficient production of well-known and already used materials, on the other hand. Sustainable chemical processes must be conceived and developed, which are working at lower temperature, to allow for higher purity and yield and produce less waste.
A promising option is the use of ionic liquids (ILs) - organic salts that are liquid below 100 degrees Celsius or, for some examples, even at room temperature - as unique reaction media. The features of these solvents can be widely adapted by variation of their chemical composition. Promising first results demonstrate that various inorganic materials (e.g., metals, alloys, semiconductors, hard materials, functional materials) can be produced in ILs near ambient conditions. Hence, this approach enables an enormous reduction of energy usage and technical effort compared to the so far applied high-temperature processes. At the same time, chemical material syntheses become better controllable, also increasing the energy and resource efficiency.
Syntheses in ILs also provide great opportunities to discover completely new low-temperature compounds with potentially outstanding and useful chemical and physical properties. The Priority Programme will bundle and coordinate efforts and competencies to promote the scientific and technological development of the IL-based synthesis of inorganic materials. Thus, the Priority Programme has three objectives:
(1) establishing IL-based resource-efficient syntheses for known functional materials,
(2) discovery of novel, even unorthodox materials that will become accessible by the special, mild conditions for syntheses in ILs,
(3) understanding the principles of dissolution, reaction and crystallisation of inorganic solids in ILs.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes

Projects

• Base Metal Nanostructures via Ionic-Liquid-based Synthesis (BaseMet-IL) (Applicants Behrens, Silke ;  Feldmann, Claus )
• Chalkogenide-based Ionic Liquids in the Synthesis of Metal Chalcogenide and Interchalcogenide Materials near Room Temperature (Applicant Sundermeyer, Jörg )
• Coordination Funds (Applicant Ruck, Michael )
• Electrochemical Synthesis of III-V (GaN, InN, GaSb, InSb, AlSb) and Metal Sulfide (ZnS, GaS) Compound Semiconductors and their Nanostructures from Ionic Liquids (Applicant Borisenko, Natalia )
• Electrochemical Synthesis of Noble Metal Functional Metarials from Ionic Liquids (Applicants Janek, Jürgen ;  Wickleder, Mathias )
• From birth to growth of metastable metal oxides in ionic liquids (Applicants Polarz, Sebastian ;  Smarsly, Bernd )
• Functional Nanoparticles for Lighting Materials and Antibacterial Coatings (Applicant Wickleder, Claudia )
• Halogenated materials from novel reactive halogenating ionic liquids (Applicant Hasenstab-Riedel, Sebastian )
• ILPIN: Ionic Liquid Precursors for Multicomponent Inorganic Nanomaterials (Applicants Saalfrank, Peter ;  Taubert, Andreas ;  Wedel, Armin )
• Ionic Liquids in the Synthesis and Tuning of Porous Materials: Knowledge-based Design of Properties Using a Combined Experimental and Theoretical Approach (Applicants Kirchner, Barbara ;  Stark, Annegret )
• Low-Temperature Approach to Solvent-Free Chalcogenidometalate Materials (Applicant Dehnen, Stefanie )
• Low-Temperature Conversions of Complex Solid Precursors in Ionic Liquids: New Compounds and Insights into Reaction Principles (Applicants Brunner, Eike ;  Ruck, Michael )
• Low-temperature Synthesis of Thermoelectric Materials by Thermal Decomposition of Tailor-made Precursors in Ionic Liquids (Applicants Reith, Heiko ;  Schulz, Stephan )
• Molecular design and X-ray spectroscopy of & on iron nanocluster catalysts (Applicants Bauer, Matthias ;  Jacobi von Wangelin, Axel )
• Multifunctional Soft Materials from and with Borate Ionic Liquids and Lanthanides (Applicants Finze, Maik ;  Müller-Buschbaum, Klaus )
• New Early Transition Metal Atom Cluster Materials: In and with Ionic Liquids (Applicant Köckerling, Martin )
• Preparation of intermetallic phases in ionic liquids (Applicants Grin, Juri ;  Straßner, Thomas )
• Pseudohalogen Chemistry in Ionic Liquids with Non-innocent Cations and Anions (Applicant Schulz, Axel )
• Reducible oxide materials: knowledge-driven design of novel low-temperature synthesis routes (Applicants Libuda, Jörg ;  Wasserscheid, Peter )
• Solubility of molecular and ionic precursors in ionic liquids (Applicants Held, Christoph ;  Verevkin, Sergey )
• Synthesis of intermetallic transition metal-main group metal nanoparticles in ionic liquids (Applicants Fischer, Roland A. ;  Janiak, Christoph )
• Synthesis of novel porous coordination polymers from structured and functionalized ionic liquid media (Applicants Hartmann, Martin ;  Schulz, Peter )
• Thermochemical investigations of phase formation processes of elements and compounds of group 15 and 16 in ionic liquid based synthesis - Mechanism of dissolution, structure formation and precipitation (Applicant Schmidt, Peer )
• Understanding solution based syntheses of inorganic materials in ionic liquids: Peering into the reaction mechanism from birth to age (Applicants Kirchner, Barbara ;  Smarsly, Bernd )

• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Michael Ruck