Carboxylated polysulfone membranes having a chiral recognition site induced by an alternative molecular imprinting technique Yoshikawa, M.; Izumi, J-I; Ooi, T.; Guiver, Michael; Robertson, Gilles Polymer Bulletin 40, 517-524 (1998)
SUMMARYMolecularly imprinted polymeric membranes were prepared from carboxylated polysulfone. Membranes imprinted by Z-D-Glu recognize the D-isomer in preference to the corresponding L-isomer, and vice versa. The amino acid preferentially adsorbed by the membrane was also selectively permeated by electrodialysis.
INTRODUCTIONWe have reported that optical resolution of racemic α-amino acids was attained by molecularly imprinted polymeric membranes, which were prepared from polystyrene resins bearing oligopeptide (1-4) or derivatives of natural polymer (5). The molecular imprinting technique, first proposed by Wulff (6), is a facile one for introducing molecular recognition sites into polymeric materials (7-9).We have applied an alternative molecular imprinting technique to our studies (1-5) that is based on inducing "molecular memory" in a membrane substrate at the same time of gelation. An optically active imprint molecule is combined with the membrane polymer containing a functional group moiety in solution. The membrane polymer assumes a favourable conformation for the functional group to interact with the imprint molecule. Upon gelation and membrane formation, a "molecular memory" of the optical isomer is retained by the formed membrane, such that it recognizes or favours interaction with isomers of the same configuration. The present work concerns the formation of molecularly imprinted polymeric membranes obtained from an entirely non-chiral synthetic polymer having carboxyl groups. The chiral recognition ability of these imprinted polymeric membranes derived from carboxylated polysulfone was investigated.