Qu is not the only guy or team who is working on Ionic Liquids.
The article makes it sounds like he's a lone wolf hero but that is not the case. This is not to dismiss his research, but he is not the only one doing research on IL's.
And there are private enterprises working on this as well, in deference to the USAToday article.
This paper also describes some research into Ionic Liquids:
A Review of Ionic Liquid Lubricants by
Anthony E. Somers, Patrick C. Howlett, Douglas R. MacFarlane, and Maria Forsyth of the University of Vistoria, Australia, can be found in Lubricants 2013.
QU is the lead author of the paper: Comparison of an oil-miscible ionic liquid and ZDDP as a lubricant anti-wear additive, Jun Qu, Huimin Luo, Miaofang Chi, Cheng Ma, Peter J. Blau, Sheng Dai, Michael B.Viola, in Tribology International l71,(2014)88–97.
So Qu had a large team working with him.
TLT, April 2010 also has an article on IL's.
But folks, it is the the real thing. I know because I have some in the lab.
One of the two IL's I am currently testing is described in: FME Transactions VOL. 36, No 3, 2008, by Michel Roegiers, Hongli Zhang and Boris Zhmud.