Encapsulation of Molecularly Imprinted Polymer Particles in Microcapsule by Facile Pickering Emulsion Polymerization

Abstract

In this work, the molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) particles for bisphenol A (BPA) were prepared and encapsulated simultaneously in the polymer microcapsule through facile Pickering emulsion polymerization. During polymerization, BPA also offers the opportunity for the encapsulation of MIP particles in the polymer microcapsule except as template molecule. The key point lies in the nucleation of oversaturated BPA and the phase separation between the resulting copolymer and hexadecane. The morphological characterization was performed by SEM and the result indicated that the MIP particles with an average size of 2 μm were perfectly encapsulated in the polymer microcapsule. The formation process was elaborated and verified by the technique of EDS and SEM. Rebinding experiments showed that the MIP possessed excellent binding properties toward BPA, including fast binding rate (reaching binding equilibrium within 30 min) and efficient binding specificity (the imprinting factor of 1.96), which presents a potential application for BPA separation, purification and analysis.