Hydrated Ionic Liquids: Perspective for Bioscience

Hydrated ionic liquid (IL) is a simple mixture of IL and water. Unique aqueous electrolyte solution can be designed by mixing IL with limited amount of water. In most hydrated ILs, there are no free water and all are strongly interacted with ions. The properties of hydrated ILs, such as polarity, viscosity, ion mobility, and hydrogen bonding ability, can therefore be controlled simply by water content. This mixture is expected to provide similar environment to that of living cell, and is desired to be effective solvents for biomolecules. In this account, we would like to survey the basic properties, recent results, and future aspects of the hydrated ILs.