Abstract:As a kind of non-renewable resources, precious metals have important uses in industry and military industry. However, there is serious imbalance in global distribution and supply and demand of precious metals resources, which highlights the importance of resource recovery and reuse. Ionic liquids(ILs) are a new kind of green solvent, with many excellent characteristics, such as non-toxic, low volatility, strong designability and so on. It has the potential of alternatives to traditional organic solvent and extracting agent, and has been widely concerned in various fields of extraction and separation, which becoming the research hotspot. The study progress of ILs in separation of precious metals by ion extraction in recent years was summarized. The application of ILs in extraction and separation of precious metals was prospected.