A Review of GUMBOS: Tunable Ionic Materials

Strategic development of ionic materials has long been of considerable interest to many researchers. For example, ionic liquid research has been extensively explored as alternative solvents to highly volatile and/or caustic traditional organic solvents. While these solvents have been classified as having a range of melting points (below 100 °C), many researchers have targeted relatively low melting point materials for their desired applications. Similar materials with higher melting points were often deemed inefficient and often discarded and declared useless. However, several groups have begun to explore the advantages of solid-phase ionic materials, known as a groups of uniform materials based on organic salts (GUMBOS). Many advantages arise through implementation of these solid-state ILs analogues in different fields of research. These advantages include 1) maintaining ease of synthesis using IL chemistry, 2) exploring easy tunability of solid-state materials, and 3) providing researchers with ability to easily develop materials on the nanoscale. Herein, we provide an overview of advantages of using GUMBOS for materials research applications.