Key Role of Ionic Liquids in the Cleaner and Greener Synthesis of Lactams
Nitin Srivastava
Abstract
The antibiotics like cephalosporin, penicillin etc. contain lactams as the main component. Due to increase in bacterial resistance to antibiotics, there is a need of synthesis of novel β-lactam agents that are stable to β-lactamase and have high potency on broad spectrum. Besides this β-lactams also decrease the cholesterol in blood plasma. They are potent anticancer agents and enzyme inhibiting substances. Ionic liquids have been found to be versatile greener solvents employed for the synthesis of lactams with many other advantages in comparison to traditional media. They are said to be “tailored solvents” whose many properties like solubility, viscosity, refractive index density can be managed as per the requirement of the reaction by tuning the size of atoms involved in the ionic liquids. The review envisages the development of sustainable synthesis of lactams using various ionic liquids and emphasizes the research in this area for the development of better synthetic methods.