Ionic liquids (ILs) are salts in the liquid state at ambient temperature, which are nonvolatile, nonflammable with high thermal stability and dissolve easily for a wide range of inorganic and organic materials. As a kind of potential green solvent, they show high efficiency and selectivity in the field of separation research, especially in instrumental analysis. Thus far, ILs have been successfully applied by many related researchers in high-performance liquid chromatography and capillary electrophoresis as chromatographic stationary phases, mobile phase additives or electroosmotic flow modifiers. This paper provides a detailed review of these applications in the study of natural products, foods, drugs and other fine chemicals. Furthermore, the prospects of ILs in liquid chromatographic and electrodriven techniques are discussed.

A novel magnetic ionic liquid aqueous two-phase systems (MILATPs) has been developed, based on a series of novelly synthesized guanidinium-based magnetic ionic liquids.

Three novel Br?nsted-acidic ionic liquids based on benzothiazolium cations were prepared, which served as catalysts for the synthesis of benzoic esters. All three gave good yields of the target esters in esterification reactions. Moreover, they combine the advantages of both homogeneous and heterogeneous solid catalysts in esterification reactions, which enabled them to serve as homogeneous catalysts to catalyze the reactions and be conveniently recovered by simple filtration after the reactions. They could be reused several times without noticeable decrease in efficiency.