Design of toxicant imprinted polymers with high specificity and selectivity

Abstract

Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) of a few substances that have toxicity at higher doses (nicotine, theophylline and caffeine) were prepared by bulk polymerization. To compare and analyse the binding efficiency of the MIPs, non-imprinted polymers (NIPs) were also prepared. Various spectroscopic methods such as FT-IR and 1H NMR were employed for analyzing pre-polymerisation solutions and for polymer characterization. Scanning electron microscopy gave the surface morphological differences between imprinted and non-imprinted polymers. Emphasis was given on the designing of imprinted polymers with maximum specificity and selectivity, by altering the nature and degree of crosslinking in the imprinted system as well as by observing the various parameters related to rebinding. The influence of different synthetic conditions such as nature of crosslinking agents, monomer-template ratio, extent of crosslinking and time of equilibrium on recognition properties of the polymers was investigated using UV-spectroscopic method. Scatchard analysis was done to evaluate the binding parameters of the imprinted polymers. The selectivity of MIPs was evaluated by rebinding the structurally similar compounds. The results indicated that the imprinted polymers exhibited an excellent selectivity towards the imprinted molecules.