**Acknowledgement**

460 Smart Actuation and Sensing Systems – Recent Advances and Future Challenges

**7. Conclusions** 

challenging.

**Appendix** 

Cations

Anions

**Table 1.**

**Author details** 

*University of Granada, Spain* 

questions not only to scientists and engineers, but also to businesspeople.

Here we list the IL nomenclature abbreviations used in the chapter.

[EtN] Ethylammonium

[Et2OPO3] Diethylphosphate [EtOSO3] Ethylsulphate [PF6] Hexafluoroborate

[AlCl4] Tetrachloroaluminate [FeCl4] Tetrachloroferrate [BF4] Tetrafluoroborate

[Ac] Acetate

[NO3] Nitrate

Laura Rodríguez-Arco, Ana Gómez-Ramírez, Juan D.G. Durán and Modesto T. López-López

[EtMeIm] 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium [BuMeIm] 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium

[(MeOEt)MeIm] 1-methoxyethyl-3-methylimidazolium

[Tf2N] Bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl) imide

in prototypes before developing any industrial device. This would allow additional industrial implementation and commercialization of this new breed of MFs. Here it is worth mentioning the work by companies like *Ioniqa Technologies* that are starting to commercialize different IL-based magnetic smart materials, including MFs, magnetoresponsive elastomers, and magnetic ILs. Therefore, this new type of MFs will pose new

In this book chapter an overview of the latest advances and research highlights in the field of MFs has been done, especially concerning the use of room-temperature ILs as fluid carriers. As it has been described, there are numerous MF applications that could benefit from IL features such as low flammability, negligible vapor pressure and tunability. However, although a lot of work has been done, there are still problems that have to be overcome if a wider commercialization of IL-based MFs is desired. Therefore, these new horizons broadened by their potential uses are, at the same time, encouraging and This work is supported by projects P08-FQM-3993 and P09-FQM-4787 (Junta de Andalucía, Spain) and FIS2009-07321 (MICINN, Spain). L.R.-A. and M.T.L.-L. also acknowledge financial support by the Secretaría de Estado de Educación, Formación Profesional y Universidades (MECD, Spain) through its FPU Program and University of Granada (Spain), respectively.
