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

What happens when you add water to nature's most stubborn green solvents? A simple splash might just unlock their full industrial potential.

Natural deep eutectic solvents, or NADES, are rising stars in green chemistry. Built from natural metabolites like sugars and organic acids, they boast incredible powers for extracting and stabilizing natural products. But they carry a frustrating flaw: stubborn, high viscosity.

To fix this, researchers explored what happens when you dilute NADES with water. Using FT-IR and 1H NMR experiments, the team watched how intensive hydrogen-bonding interactions between NADES components gradually weaken with water, disappearing completely at around 50% volume.

That simple adjustment works wonders. Adding just a small amount of water slashes the solvent's viscosity down to water-like levels and rockets electrical conductivity up to 100 times. This neat trick offers a controllable way to modulate NADES for future use in food processing, enzyme reactions, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics.

Key Points

• High viscosity limits the applications of natural deep eutectic solvents.
• Water dilution weakens and eventually erases strong hydrogen-bonding interactions.
• Small water additions drastically reduce viscosity and boost conductivity.