Selective Adsorption and Recognition by Molecularly Imprinted Polymer: A Study on Molecular Self-Assembly and its Effect on Selectivity

Abstract

This article presents an interesting study on the molecular self-assembly and its effect on selective recognition by molecularly imprinted polymers. With theophylline as template and methylacrylic acid as functional monomer, the self-assembly appears to play important roles in the selective adsorption, affecting not only the adsorption amount but also the cognitive selectivity. Both of them become evident by the change of monomer-template ratio. An increase in the monomer-template ratio will result in a higher level of adsorption. The best selectivity for molecular recognition is, however, shown at the optimal constitute (corresponding to the saturation interaction of monomer and template). A higher or lower monomer-template ratio leads to a dramatic decrease in this selectivity. Related information indicates that this may be a result from the matched arrangement between binding sites and template, which makes the binding sites capable of selectively recognizing the imprint species. Preliminarily, this study presents an insight into the understanding of molecular recognition by imprinted polymers.