Energetic ionic liquids as explosives and propellant fuels: A new journey of ionic liquid chemistry

The paper presents a review of energetic ionic liquids (EILs) including history, syntheses, properties, and applications in the fields of energetic materials. The main aim of this work is to present the latest advances of EILs as new energetic materials and to emphasize the new possibilities and the future challenges in this field. A new research field of utilizing the reactivity of EILs for bipropellant applications has opened up with the discovery of the IL hypergols. It has been observed that different substituents and energy-containing groups can significantly influence the properties and performance of EILs such as melting point, energy density, thermal stability, detonation properties, and sensitivity. The dual-functional strategy can also allow the independent design of the structures of both cation and anion, making the energetic performance and safety issues of the final EILs reasonably predictable.