The electrodeposition of reactive metals, such as aluminum and magnesium, has proven to be an elusive goal in electrochemistry. These metals represent a class of materials that are generally more environmentally friendly than transition metal complexes but due to their overwhelmingly negative reduction potentials, are generally considered impossible to deposit from aqueous solutions. These metals may, however, be electrodeposited from solutions based on organic solvents or ionic liquids, but these media must be kept rigorously dry. In the presence of even trace amounts of water, the relatively low water splitting potential, combined with the relative abundance of water instead leads to excessive gas evolution.

We will show that, by using an ionic liquid inspired ligation approach to metal deposition we were able to successfully shift the reduction potential of reactive metals much less negative. This shift allows the metal reduction to be competitive with water splitting and allows the deposition of a metal rich oxide layer from aqueous solution. These layers were found, under some circumstances to be both adherent and coherent and with thicknesses on the micron scale.