Imprinting Technology for Effective Sorbent Fabrication: Current State-of-Art and Future Prospects

Abstract

In the last 10 years, we have witnessed an extensive development of instrumental techniques in analytical methods for determination of various molecules and ions at very low concentrations. Nevertheless, the presence of interfering components of complex samples hampered the applicability of new analytical strategies. Thus, additional sample pre-treatment steps were proposed to overcome the problem. Solid sorbents were used for clean-up samples but insufficient selectivity of commercial materials limited their utility. Here, the application of molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) or ion-imprinted polymers (IIPs) in the separation processes have recently attracted attention due to their many advantages, such as high selectivity, robustness, and low costs of the fabrication process. Bulk or monoliths, microspheres and core-shell materials, magnetically susceptible and stir-bar imprinted materials are applicable to different modes of solid-phase extraction to determine target analytes and ions in a very complex environment such as blood, urine, soil, or food. The capability to perform a specific separation of enantiomers is a substantial advantage in clinical analysis. The ion-imprinted sorbents gained interest in trace analysis of pollutants in environmental samples. In this review, the current synthetic approaches for the preparation of MIPs and IIPs are comprehensively discussed together with a detailed characterization of respective materials. Furthermore, the use of sorbents in environmental, food, and biomedical analyses will be emphasized to point out current limits and highlight the future prospects for further development in the field.

Green Aspects in Molecularly Imprinted Polymers by Biomass Waste Utilization

“…Imprinted polymers, compared to biological systems such as proteins and nucleic acids, have higher physical robustness, strength, and resistance to elevated temperatures and pressures and inertness towards acids, bases, metal ions, and organic solvents. In addition, their production is less expensive with a very high storage life, keeping their recognition capacity also for several years at room temperature [ 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ]. MIPs’ advantageous features permitted an extensive application in analytical field such as foods, drugs, biological, and environmental sectors for the detection, preconcentration or separation of several analytes [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ].…”

“…For instance, MIPs have a very promising future with great potential development in the food industry, theranostics and pharmaceutics but their applications in these fields, where toxicity specially needs to be contained, require more efforts to engage green approach to produce “green” MIPs. In the last decade, several high-quality reviews have been written on molecular imprinting [ 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ], but most of them have dealt with the fundamental aspects and characteristic applications of MIPs while few review articles on novel techniques related to their preparation. Recently, only a few reviews highlighting the green aspect in MIPs preparation have been published [ 20 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 ].…”

Synergetic Effect of Dual Functional Monomers in Molecularly Imprinted Polymer Preparation for Selective Solid Phase Extraction of Ciprofloxacin

“…Thus, the multifunctional monomer strategy is an effective method for synthesizing imprinted materials, especially for templates with polar functional groups such as CIP. Various advanced imprinting techniques (on surface, co-precipitation, emulsion, and suspension polymerization) have been developed for preparing imprinted materials [ 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 ]. The conventional bulk imprinting is essential for preparing imprinted materials because a simple, rapid, and pure MIPs’ production can be produced without sophisticated instrumentation.…”

Guiding Molecularly Imprinted Polymer Design by Pharmacophore Modeling

“…During polymerization, molecular imprinting itself results from a pre-polymerization complex, which is formed by non-covalent interactions between functional monomers and the selected template [ 25 ]. Understanding and optimizing the formation of this pre-polymerization complex has often been the result of experimental but also of computational studies [ 26 , 27 ].…”