Fast and sustainable CO2 conversion to propylene carbonate using fluoroalcohol-based bifunctional ionic liquids: Insights from experiments and theoretical simulations

We report on the metal-free and rapid catalytic conversion of carbon dioxide into cyclic carbonates under solventless conditions utilizing novel bifunctional fluoroalcohol-based ionic liquids (FBILs) as catalsyts. In the presence of 2.5 mol% 4-(1,1,1,3,3,3-hexafluoro-2-hydroxyisopropyl) phenyl trimethylammonium iodide (FBIL-1), under 0.1 MPa and 90 °C, excellent yield of propylene carbonate(>95%) was achieved in 1 h, which significantly shortens the reaction time, compared with the conventional catalysts. DFT calculations reveal that FBILs with fluorine-substituted hydroxyl groups exhibit stronger hydrogen bonding with epoxides compared to ILs lacking fluorine substitutions. The hydrogen bond length for ILF/PO is 1.658 Å, shorter than that for IL/PO (1.813 Å). This characteristic contributes to reducing the activation energy for the ring-opening reaction of epoxides. In the ILF/PO system, the reaction barrier is 88.72 kJ·mol−1, lower than the 101.46 kJ·mol−1 barrier for IL/PO, allowing the former to more rapidly facilitate the fixation of carbon dioxide into cyclic carbonates. Besides high catalytic efficiency, these FBILs have the characteristics of a facile synthesis route and easy post-reaction recovery.