In several recent publications we have described a set of basic ion design features which have enabled the creation of ionic liquids with unusually high degrees of thermal stability. These salts incorporate perarylated phosphonium or sulfonium cations and any of several thermally stable fluorinated anions. While some representatives of each of these structural-compositional genres are commercially available, most of the salts with which we have worked are ones the cations of which have had to be prepared in our own laboratory. Fortuitously, there are some simple and reliable synthetic approaches which can be harnessed to this end. One preparative approach to select triarylsulfonium cations is especially convenient and versatile, proceeding at room temperature and consisting of the one-pot mixing of a diarylsulfoxide, a second organic substrate that provides the final aromatic moiety of the cation, and finally trifluoromethane sulfonic anhydride.<br/>During the ongoing course of our work, it occurred to us that since – as has been pointed out in innumerable publications – graphene sheets can be conceived of as the ultimate expression of a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, it seemed reasonable to posit that one might be able to decorate the edges of graphene sheets with diarylsulfonium moieties by using graphene as the “second organic substrate” in the foregoing triarylsulfonium synthesis rubric. And, while such an attempt would be our first experiment of any sort using graphene, it seemed that this approach might be quite useful for creating carbon nanomaterials with an altered capacity to interact with ionic liquids relative to unmodified counterparts. In this poster we describe in depth our synthetic approach and experimental data which validates the success of the approach in creating ion-tagged graphene sheets.

Ionic modification of carbon nanomaterials for altering their capacity for interactions with ionic liquids

255th National Meeting (2018)

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