A highly efficient catalyst system, palladium complex–ionic liquid, was developed for the carbonylation of amines to give carbamate or urea. The desired products could be precipitated by adding water into the resulting mixture and the catalyst system could be reused with slight loss of catalytic activity.

★★★☆☆ F. Shi et al. / Journal of Catalysis 219 (2003) 372–375.

SO3H-functionalized ionic liquids have been employed as an alternative reaction medium to conventional acid catalysts for oligomerization of various olefins, to produce branched olefin derivatives in high conversions and excellent selectivity. The ionic liquid plays a dual role as both catalyst and solvent, providing an efficient and reusable acidic catalyst system for the oligomerization of olefins.

★★★☆☆ Y. Gu et al. / Catalysis Communications 4 (2003) 597–601.

With equal molar ratio of benzene and hydrogen peroxide and without any additional volatile organic solvent, a green aqueous–ionic liquid biphasic hydroxylation of benzene to phenol with hydrogen peroxide as oxidant and metal dodecanesulfonate salts such as ferric tri(dodecanesulfonate) as catalyst was conducted with excellent selectivity and enhanced conversion.

★★★★☆ Jiajian Peng, Feng Shi, Yanlong Gu and Youquan Deng. Green Chemistry, 2003, 5, 224–226.

Methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE), ethyl tert-butyl ether (ETBE), and isopropyl tert-butyl ether (IPTBE) have been synthesized for the first time over a non-acid ionic liquid as catalyst and dehydrator with high conversion ( > 90%) and selectivity ( > 90%) under mild conditions.

★★★★☆ Feng Shi, Hai Xiong, Yanlong Gu, Shu Guo and Youquan Deng. CHEM. COMMUN. , 2003, 1054–1055.

Ferric hydroxide supported Au prepared with co-precipitation without heat treatment could be a very effective catalyst for selective CO oxidation in the presence of H2 at lower temperatures.

★★★★☆ Botao Qiao and Youquan Deng. CHEM. COMMUN. , 2003, 2192–2193.

★★★★★ Feng Shi, Youquan Deng,* Tianlong SiMa, Jiajian Peng, Yanlong Gu, and Botao Qiao. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2003, 42, 3257–3260. ★★★★★

A series of highly efficient polymer-immobilized gold catalysts were prepared for the oxidative carbonylation of aniline and its derivatives to obtain carbamates and symmetric ureas in a clean, simple, solvent-free, and obtainable product-ready way.TEM showed that the average gold particle size of fresh catalyst was less than 10 nm.

★★★☆☆ Feng Shi and Youquan Deng. Journal of Catalysis 211, 548–551 (2002).

At 170°C and using ionic liquids as solvent and catalyst, primary and secondary aliphatic amines could react with dimethyl carbonate to give alkyl carbamates with good yield. Due to its insolubility, the desired carbamate solid could be recovered by simple filtration from the two-layer mixture of dimethyl carbonate and ionic liquid after reaction and the formation of N-methylated and deammoniated products were restrained.

★★★★☆ T. Sima et al. / Tetrahedron Letters 43 (2002) 8145–8147.

Hydroesterification of tert-butyl alcohol with ethanol catalyzed by transition metal triphenylphosphine complexes in the presence of p-toluenesulfonic acid was investigated using room temperature ionic liquids as the reaction medium at 373–413 K and 3–6 MPa of CO. In comparison with the organic solvents as reaction medium, higher conversion was achieved and ethyl tert-valerate could be directly formed in the ionic liquid medium. The products could be separated from the ionic liquids easily due to their immiscibility in this medium.

★★★☆☆ Kun Qiao and Youquan Deng. New J. Chem., 2002, 26, 667–670.

Electrocatalytic cycloaddition of carbon dioxide to epoxides in room temperature ionic liquids as reaction media without any additional supporting electrolyte and catalyst could be conducted with high to excellent performances under mild conditions.

★★★★☆ Hongzhou Yang, Yanlong Gu, Youquan Deng and Feng Shi. CHEM. COMMUN., 2002, 274–275.