Tailoring properties of natural deep eutectic solvents with water to facilitate their applications

What happens when you add water to nature's greenest solvents? A little splash completely transforms their stubborn thickness and unlocks their true potential.

Natural deep eutectic solvents, or NADES, are rising stars in green chemistry. Built from everyday natural metabolites like sugars and organic acids, they offer a brilliant alternative for extracting natural products. Yet, they share a frustrating flaw: they are notoriously viscous. To fix this, researchers explored what happens when you dilute these thick mixtures with water. Using structural analysis tools like FT-IR and 1H NMR, they uncovered a fascinating chemical story. Intensive hydrogen bonding holds the two solvent components tightly together. But as water enters the picture, these vital bonds gradually weaken, eventually disappearing entirely at around fifty percent water concentration. This shift changes everything. Adding just a small amount of water dramatically tames the high viscosity down to water-like levels and boosts electrical conductivity by up to one hundred times. Tested using bioactive compounds like quercetin and carthamin, this simple adjustment opens the door to controlling NADES precisely for food processing, enzyme reactions, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics.

Key Points

• Water dilution weakens intensive hydrogen bonding in NADES.
• Small water additions reduce high viscosity and boost conductivity.
• Enables controllable NADES applications in food, pharma, and cosmetics.