Room temperature ionic liquid (RTIL) possessing negligible vapor pressure can be put in a vacuum chamber without vaporization. This fact enables to make wet condition even under vacuum condition although it is absolute common sense that vacuum conditions must be dry world. Based on this attracting fact, we have attempted to introduce RTILs to several kinds of instruments, which need to keep vacuum condition in their sample chamber for analyses and material productions. Introduction of RTIL to analyses requiring vacuum conditions including electron microscopy and energy dispersed X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy allows us to observe samples with wet condition and chemical reactions and to analyze these samples. Metal sputtering and quantum beam instruments are exploitable for production of metal nanoparticles. The resulting metal nanoparticles are quite stable and they keep their electrocatalytic activities.

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Control of the molecular orientation and its in situ observation have successfully been carried out. The attachment of porphyrin derivatives bearing non-, one-, and four-carboxyl groups on ITO electrode surfaces was monitored using time-resolved enhancement evanescent wave electro-absorption spectroscopy. The stability of the porphyrin self-assembled monolayers was also determined by the combination of cyclic voltammetry and evanescent wave electronic spectroscopy measurements.

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Seawater can be used as an electrolyte for Cl₂ evolution, and proper selection of electrode materials is of great importance. In this paper, a new type of dimensionally stable anodes, Ti/RuO₂-IrO₂-Sb₂O₅-SnO₂, was investigated for Cl₂ evolution from seawater. The physicochemical and electrochemical properties were examined, and the electrocatalytic activity for Cl₂ evolution was measured under different conditions. It was shown that the RuO₂-IrO₂-Sb₂O₅-SnO₂ coating was compact in microstructure. The current efficiency was 71.2–86.7%, depending on the operational conditions. The anodes were predicted to be able to work effectively for over 6 years at a current density of 1500 A m⁻² for seawater electrolysis.

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Nitrogen-containing heterocyclic compounds were investigated as electrolyte solvents of dye-sensitized solar cells. 3-Methyl-2-oxazolidone (NMO) was revealed to exhibit the highest efficiency (7.0%) among the five solvents. The conversion efficiency of 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP), which has the lowest melting point, was improved from 5.0 to 6.5% by adding the high relative permittivity solvent of N-methylformamide with volume ratio 1:1.

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