Systematic approach for the synthesis of carbohydrate-based ionic liquids (CHILS) combined with their design towards biodegradability in aquatic environment („Benign by Design“)

• Applicants: Dr. Stefan Jopp; Professor Dr. Klaus Kümmerer
• Subject Area: Organic Molecular Chemistry - Synthesis and Characterisation ; Technical Chemistry
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 573786853

Carbohydrate-based ionic liquids (CHILS) offer a high diversity of different structural elements, like different sugars (e.g. glucose, ribose, galactose, isosorbide, glucosamine), different cationic head-groups (e.g. ammonium, imidazolium, sulfonium, triazolium) or different protecting groups (ester, ether). This diversity has many advantages for the tunability of CHILS for their applications in catalysis and material science. However, important data about the biodegrabability of CHILS is limited and concentrated on very specific structural elements. Due to this, the existing data of biodegrabability of CHILS cannot be used to make any arguments about the general biodegrabability of CHILS and their high diversity. The goal of this project is to create new CHILS with a systematic synthetic approach. These new CHILS will cover the structural diversity of the class of CHILS, but will also be designed to have full comparability between each other. The tests of biodegrabability of these new CHILS will thus lead to the identification of new structure-biodegrabability-relationships of different sugars and different cationic head-groups. The results will recorded in a OECD301D-dataset for the computer-assisted evaluation of the biodegrabability, leading to the identification and prediction of advantageous and disadvantageous structural elements in regards of biodegrabability.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants