Synthesis of 1-[1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluooctyl]-3-[2-(oxiran-2-yl)ethyl]imidazolium 4-[(2-oxiran-2-yl)ethoxy]benzenesulfonate as a New Perfluorinated Ionic Monomer

Access to perfluorinated compounds represents a growing challenge in the academic and industrial fields to achieve target compounds with specific physico-chemical properties. Especially, the insertion of a perfluorinated chain within an ionic liquid can provide improvements not just in terms of hydrophobicity and lipophobicity, but also viscosity, density as well as thermal stability. In this research area, we have recently developed new access points to several epoxy imidazolium salts combined with fluorinated anions such as bistriflimide (NTf2-), hexafluorophosphate (PF6-) or tetrafluoroborate (BF4-). Here, we reported the synthesis of a perfluorinated imidazolium cation associated with a sulfonate anion as a new functionalized partner. This sequence required four steps from imidazole (cationic part) and three steps from sodium 4-hydroxybenzenesulfonate (anionic part), respectively. This perfluorinated ionic liquid was fully characterized by nuclear magnetic resonance with H-1-NMR, F-19-NMR, C-13-NMR, DEPT, COSY, HSQC, HMBC and IR spectroscopy. The two parts of the salt were confirmed by high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS), and we combined thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) to determine the thermal properties of this new compound.