During the last years ionic liquids (ILs) were increasingly used and investigated as reaction media, hydrogen sources, catalysts, templating agents and stabilizers for the synthesis of (monometallic and bimetallic) metal nanoparticles (M-NPs). Especially ILs with 1,3-dialkyl-imidazolium cations featured prominently in the formation and stabilization of M-NPs. This chapter summarizes studies which focused on the interdependencies of the IL with the metal nanoparticle and tried to elucidate, for example, influences of the IL-cation, -anion and alkyl chain length. Qualitatively, the size of M-NPs was found to increase with the size of the IL-anion. The influence of the size of imidazolium-cation is less clear. The M-NP size was both found to increase and to decrease with increasing chain lengths of the 1,3-dialkyl-imidazolium cation. It is evident from such reports on cation and anion effects of ILs that the interaction between an IL and a (growing) metal nanoparticle is far from understood. Factors like IL-viscosity, hydrogen-bonding capability and the relative ratio of polar and non-polar domains of ILs may also influence the stability of nanoparticles in ionic liquids and an improved understanding of the IL-nanoparticle interaction would be needed for a more rational design of nanomaterials in ILs. Furthermore, thiol-, ether-, carboxylic acid-, amino- and hydroxyl-functionalized ILs add to the complexity by acting also as coordinating capping ligands. In addition imidazolium cations are precursors to N-heterocyclic carbenes, NHCs which form from imidazolium-based ionic liquids by in situ deprotonation at the acidic C2-H ring position as intermediate species during the nanoparticle seeding and growth process or as surface coordinating ligand for the stabilization of the metal nanoparticle.

The microwave-induced decomposition of bis{N,N'-diisopropylacetamidinate}nickel(II) [Ni{MeC(NiPr) } ] or bis(1,5-cyclooctadiene)nickel(0) [Ni(COD) ] in imidazolium-, pyridinium-, or thiophenium-based ionic liquids (ILs) with different anions (tetrafluoroborate, [BF ] , hexafluorophosphate, [PF ] , and bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide, [NTf ] ) yields small, uniform nickel nanoparticles (Ni NPs), which are stable in the absence of capping ligands (surfactants) for more than eight weeks. The soft, wet-chemical synthesis yields the metastable Ni hexagonal close-packed (hcp) and not the stable Ni face-centered cubic (fcc) phase. The size of the nickel nanoparticles increases with the molecular volume of the used anions from about 5 nm for [BF ] to ≈10 nm for [NTf ] (with 1-alkyl-3-methyl-imidazolium cations). The n-butyl-pyridinium, [BPy] , cation ILs reproducibly yield very small nickel nanoparticles of 2(±1) nm average diameter. The Ni NPs were characterized by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM) and powder X-ray diffraction. An X-ray photoelectron spectroscopic (XPS) analysis shows an increase of the binding energy (E ) of the electron from the Ni 2p orbital of the very small 2(±1) nm diameter Ni particles by about 0.3 eV to E =853.2 eV compared with bulk Ni , which is traced to the small cluster size. The Ni nanoparticles show superparamagnetic behavior from 150 K up to room temperature. The saturation magnetization of a Ni (2±1 nm) sample from [BPy][NTf ] is 2.08 A m kg and of a Ni (10±4 nm) sample from [LMIm][NTf ] it is 0.99 A m kg , ([LMIm]=1-lauryl-3-methyl- imidazolium). The Ni NPs were active catalysts in IL dispersions for 1-hexene or benzene hydrogenation. Over 90 % conversion was reached under 5 bar H in 1 h at 100 °C for 1-hexene and a turnover frequency (TOF) up to 1330 mol (mol ) h or in 60 h at 100 °C for benzene hydrogenation and TOF=23 mol (mol ) h .

A neutral heterobimetallic triple-decker stannole complex was prepared by the reaction of an anionic ruthenocene bearing a stannole dianionic ligand with [Rh(cod)Cl]2 (cod = 1,5-cyclooctadiene), and the resulting Ru-Rh complex exhibits an electronic property different from those of the corresponding Ru-Ru and Rh-Rh complexes. The Ru-Rh complex can be decomposed in ionic liquids to metal nanoparticles.

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