1 INTRODUCTION

Since their humble beginnings as alternative battery electrolytes, ionic liquids have emerged as one of a small number of new and exciting solvents capable of meeting the needs of tomorrow's chemical industry. In less than thirty years they have evolved from these electrolytes into tuneable, environmentally friendly, solvent/catalyst systems. In general their power stems from their unique ability to dissolve and therefore bring together a wide range of molecules (inorganic, organic and catalytic) to perform otherwise difficult homogeneous reactions, although there are considerable engineering benefits as well. Of these, the lack of any significant vapour pressure, firstly eliminates any hazard associated with solvent volatilisation and secondly, allows for the direct recovery of low boiling products. In addition, it is recognised that these solvents can be combined with, or retrofitted to, traditional methods of production leading to improvements in selectivity, catalyst recycle and an overall reduction in the huge quantities of organic solvents used worldwide.

The specific and selectable properties of these solvents allow a diverse range of reactions to be carried out including alkylations1, C-C bond coupling reactions2, polymerisations3 , hydrogenations4, hydroformylation5, and alkoxycarbonylations6 These reactions have been extensively reviewed recently7. Of all the reactions studies only one, to our knowledge has been performed using a heterogeneously supported catalyst suspended in the ionic liquid. In this paper Hagiwara et al.8 investigated the Heck reaction using a carbon...