Editorial [Hot topic: Ionic Liquid and Catalysis (Guest Editor: Zhenshan Hou)]

This thematic issue covers a fast moving field that encompasses principles from areas of green chemistry and catalysis. It is very attractive area and presages an era in which almost all reactions may be carried out with environmentally benign catalysts and solvents. Indeed, the dawn of this epoch was demonstrated by the design and application of novel ionic liquids. I believe that the future research will open up new ways to the breakthrough in the development and industrial applications of ionic liquids. The literature of ionic liquids is extremely wide but I do hope that these six reviews piled up in the issue will supply new and relevant information for many chemists working in the field of green solvents. The first review was written by S. A. Gangu, L. R. Weatherley, A. M. Scurto (University of Kansas, Lawrence, USA), they presented an overview on the application of ionic liquids in whole-cell biocatalysis. In their contribution they have discussed the various whole-cell biotransformations to date, as exemplified with ketone reductions in biphasic ionic liquid/aqueous system and the connection of the ionic liquid structure to biocompatiblility and biocatalysis. This review covers the literature of the past 10 years and includes 84 references. The second review came from Brazil, it was written by M. H. G. Prechtl, J. D. Scholten, B. A. D. Neto, J. Dupont (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Avenida Bento Goncalves, Brazil). They provided a detailed overview on chiral ionic liquids as a source of chirality for asymmetric catalysis. The current review includes 84 references and covers reactions using typical homogeneous catalysts e.g. organocatalysts, transition metal complexes and solid catalysts for heterogeneous catalysis in solvent-systems with chiral ionic liquids. The third review was written by T. Jiang, B. Han (Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China), Both have presented their recent work focused on the synthesis and the applications of ionic liquids as the solvents and/or catalysts for chemical reactions, and also in the catalyst designing and material fabrication. In the final part, the important advantages of the applicability of ionic liquids and the latest progress in ionic liquid, was proposed. The current review includes 84 references.