Abstract: Ionic liquids (also known as room temperature molten salts) are characterized by their special feature of keeping liquid state under room temperature or under temperatures a little below room temperature.Based on the unique physicochemical property,ionic liquids were applied widely in capillary electrophoresis,and a review on this topic pertaining to the progress and trends,covering mainly the years from 1999 to 2007,was presented in this paper (43 ref.cited).