Cesium acetate is a white, hygroscopic, granular salt commonly used in organic synthetic chemistries such as:
•Perkin reaction
•condensation of aromatic aldehydes with fatty acids
•alcohol inversion
In most of these reactions, the higher solubility of cesium acetate compared to the insoluble incumbents CsF or CsCO3 which only work best at elevated reaction temperature) facilitates the chemistries to proceed at much lower reaction temperatures. Reduced reaction temperatures widens the reaction scope to volatile shorter chain acid and amine reactants that would rather decompose at elevated reaction temperatures.
In other high-tech applications, researchers established that alloying Cs⁺ into hybrid lead halide perovskites generates a path to long-term perovskites stability critical to the implementation in solar cells (See: Laura Piveteau, et. al., Bulk and Nanocrystalline Cesium Lead-Halide Perovskites as Seen by Halide Magnetic Resonance, ACS Cent. Sci. 2020, 6, 7, 1138–1149). In these applications, cesium acetate is proving to be a more versatile cesium precursor, again replacing cesium carbonate as a more soluble (easier to work with) cesium source in the fabrication of cesium lead halide perovskites.
Other prominent applications include:
•specialty glass additive
•DNA purification
•high density electrolyte in batteries and fuel cells