Amino Acid-derived Ionic Liquids: Novel Biodegradable Catalytic Systems for Green Synthesis of Heterocycles

The Amino Acid-derived Ionic Liquids (AAILs), as green biodegradable catalysts, gained special attention in recent years due to their alignment with green chemistry's important rules. They could be prepared via easy techniques. Ohno and coworkers synthesized amino acid-derived ILs for the first time. AAILs could play multiple roles as solvents and/or excellent promoters with high catalytic activity and also as chiral additives. The special advantages of AAILs usage are i) elevation of the product yields, ii) excellent chemo and/or stereo-selectivity, iii) short reaction times, iv) simple work-up procedures, v) diminishing or prevention of by-products formation, vi) mild reaction conditions, and vii) recoverability and reusability within several cycles without noticeable activity loss. The synthesis of pharmaceutically-active heterocycles is interesting in organic chemistry and medicinal fields. The multi-activity characteristics of AAILs make them interesting candidates for promoting different classes of MCRs to prepare heterocyclic compounds. In the book chapter, the applications of various AAILs (alone or as a part of core-shell structures) will be discussed for the synthesis of heterocycles with a glance at nano and green chemistry. The content of the chapter has been divided into two main parts, which are a) the applications of AAILs as catalysts and/or solvents in the synthesis of heterocycles, and b) employing the bionanocomposites that included AAILs as catalysts in the synthesis of heterocycles. According to the reports, they played a key role in obtaining different libraries of heterocycles, which could potentially be active drugs.