Kenneth Richard Seddon – författare

Crystal engineering is a rapidly emerging, cross-disciplinary field that seeks to develop protocols for predicting and controlling the structure and thus the functional properties of solids. Such properties range from the mundane (colour, melting point) to those of great relevance to materials scientists and physicists (polarity, porosity, conductivity). The emergence of the field can be attributed to a corresponding rise in the importance of supramolecular chemistry and its relevance to areas as diverse as polymorphism in pharmaceuticals, nonlinear optics and high Tc superconductors. The crystal engineer needs an understanding of bonding theory, computational chemistry, applied spectroscopy, structural methods, synthesis strategies, and applications of custom-designed solids. This book contains chapters on all these topics, written by internationally recognised experts, in addition to contributions from some of the leading researchers in the field.

Devoted to research in the area of ionic liquids - salts with melting points below 100 degrees centigrade - this text explores the promise of ionic liquids and sets the research agenda for the field. With a distinct bias towards actual industrial research and development applications, the book is virtually a manifesto for the new age of "Green Chemistry". The major industrial challenges to sustainability - the book's leitmotiv - are: reducing water use; increasing energy efficiency; reducing reliance of fossil fuel feedstocks; increasing use of renewables; including sustainability as a major economic criterion. Thereafter, the book goes on to consider precisely where ionic liquids can help in achieving this new vision, via new techniques, new processes, new reactions. The safety/health/environment properties of the ionic liquids are also considered. Finally, it is clear that there needs to be a major increase in the number of workers studying ionic liquids if this promise of a new Green Chemistry is to be achieved.

This book contains the lecture notes for the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on th Green Industrial Applications of Ionic Liquids held April 12th_16 , 2000 in Heraklion, Crete, Greece. This was the fIrst international meeting devoted to research in the area of ionic liquids (salts with melting points below 100 0c), and was intended to explore the promise of ionic liquids as well as to set a research agenda for the fIeld. It was the fIrst international meeting dedicated to the study and application of ionic liquids as solvents, and forty-one scientists and engineers from academia, industry, and government research laboratories (as well as six industry observers and four student assistants) met to discuss the current and future status of the application of ionic liquids to new green industrial technologies. It was immediately clear that the number of organic chemists and engineers working in the fIeld needed to be increased. It was also clear that the declining interest in high temperature molten salts and subsequent increase in low melting ionic liquid solvents had not yet taken hold in Eastern Europe. Participants from NATO Partner Countries contributed signifIcant expertise in high temperature molten salts and were able to take back a new awareness and interest in ionic liquid solvents.

This is the book of the ftrst ever International meeting dedicated entirely to Crystal th th Engineering, which occurred during 9 _20 September, 1996. It is thus entirely appropriate that it was a NATO Advanced Science Institute, and that the speakers represented the ofthe presentations, the good leading lights in the fteld from around the world. The quality humour of the speakers, the responsive, interactative audience, the wonderful setting, the outstanding food and the occasional hurricane all added up to two of the most enjoyable weeks of science that we have ever experienced (and for the organisers to actually enjoy a meeting must indeed be a rare event!). The artides in this book will give the reader a flavour of the science - a sense of the excitement of a group of people in at the foundation of a fledgling area - avision of the scientiftc breadth ofthe subject. What they fail to do, not surprisingly, is to capture the camaraderie, goodwill and intellectual flow of the meeting. This will be remembered by all who attended for a very long time, and marked this meeting, at least in our varied experiences, as unique. But its success lies not with organisers, but despite them.