Ionic liquid thermal stabilities: decomposition mechanisms and analysis tools

The increasing amount of papers published on ionic liquids generates an extensive quantity of data. The thermal stability data of divergent ionic liquids are collected in this paper with attention to the experimental set-up. The influence and importance of the latter parameters are broadly addressed. Both ramped temperature and isothermal thermogravimetric analysis are discussed, along with state-of-the-art methods, such as TGA-MS and pyrolysis-GC. The strengths and weaknesses of the different methodologies known to date demonstrate that analysis methods should be in line with the application. The combination of data from advanced analysis methods allows us to obtain in-depth information on the degradation…