A norepinephrine coated magnetic molecularly imprinted polymer for simultaneous multiple chiral recognition

Abstract

A newly designed molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) material was developed and successfully used as recognition element for enantioselective recognition by microchip electrophoresis. In this work, molecularly imprinted polymers were facilely prepared employing Fe3O4 nanoparticles (NPs) as the supporting substrate and norepinephrine as the functional monomer in the presence of template molecule in a weak alkaline solution. After extracting the embedded template molecules, the produced imprinted Fe3O4@polynorepinephrine (MIP–Fe3O4@PNE) NPs have cavities complementary to three dimensional shape of template molecules favoring high binding capacity and magnetism property for easy manipulation. The MIP–Fe3O4@PNE NPs prepared with l-tryptophan, l-valine, l-threonine, Gly-l-Phe, S-(−)-ofloxacin or S-(−)-binaphthol as template molecules were packed in the polydimethylsiloxane microchannel via magnetic field as novel stationary phase to successful enantioseparation of corresponding target analysts. The MIP–Fe3O4@PNE NPs-based microchip electrophoresis system exhibited strong recognition ability, excellent high-performance, admirable reproducibility and stability, which provided a powerful protocol for separation enantiomers within a short analytical time and opened up an avenue for multiplex chiral compound assay in various systems.