Molecular
imprinted polymers (MIPs) have been widely applied in
the separation of compounds in complex matrixes due to the high selectivity
for molecular recognition. However, MIPs not only adsorb the targeted
molecule but also adsorb structurally similar analogues, which leads
to some loss of selectivity. In this work, for improvement of selectivity
of MIPs, a novel solid-phase extraction method with two MIPs in two
steps (TMIPs-TSPE) was established. As a demonstration, two MIPs were
prepared by using quercetin as the template and 4-vinylypyridine (4VP)
and acrylamide (AM) as representative functional monomers, respectively.
The adsorption properties and kinetic characteristics of the two MIPs
showed that they had a distinct adsorption capacity and adsorption
mechanism, which is the basis for establishment of TMIPs-TSPE. The
TMIPs-TSPE method first used one of the two MIPs as adsorbent to extract
molecules from a solution mixture containing quercetin and three analogues.
Then the other MIP was used to achieve a second extraction of the
extracted molecules from the first step. The results showed that the
unique targeted molecule quercetin was extracted, which illustrates
that TMIPs-TSPE improved the specificity of the MIPs. The process
of molecular recognition can be influenced by the intensity of binding
sites between MIPs and molecules. Moreover, it may also depend on
the spatial orientation of molecules entering the cavities of MIPs,
which deserves more attention as one important property for the development
of molecular imprinting. These results demonstrated that the novel
TMIPs-TSPE method contributes to the improved selectivity of MIPs.