Abstract
Chitosan is widely used in molecular imprinting technology (MIT) as a functional monomer or supporting matrix because of its low cost and high contents of amino and hydroxyl functional groups. The various excellent properties of chitosan, which include nontoxicity, biodegradability, biocompatibility, and attractive physical and mechanical performances, make chitosan a promising alternative to conventional functional monomers. Recently, chitosan molecularly-imprinted polymers have gained considerable attention and showed significant potential in many fields, such as curbing environmental pollution, medicine, protein separation and identification, and chiral-compound separation. These extensive applications are due to the polymers’ desired selectivity, physical robustness, and thermal stability, as well as their low cost and easy preparation. Cross-linkers, which fix the functional groups of chitosan around imprinted molecules, play an important role in chitosan molecularly-imprinted polymers. This review summarizes the important cross-linkers of chitosan molecularly-imprinted polymers and illustrates the cross-linking mechanism of chitosan and cross-linkers based on the two glucosamine units. Finally, some significant attempts to further develop the application of chitosan in MIT are proposed.
Highlights
Molecular imprinting is a process in which interacting and cross-linking monomers are arranged around a molecular template, followed by polymerization to form a cast-like shell
We focus on the current status of the commonly used cross-linkers in chitosan molecularly-imprinted polymers (MIPs) (Table 1), and illustrate the cross-linking mechanism of chitosan and its cross-linkers
The results obtained in the present study show that the magnetic ion-imprinted chitosan/TiO2 (MICT) composite is an ideal platform to accelerate the simultaneous disposal of heavy metals and organic pollutants in wastewater
Summary
Molecular imprinting is a process in which interacting and cross-linking monomers are arranged around a molecular template, followed by polymerization to form a cast-like shell. MIPs have attracted considerable attention because of their outstanding advantages, which include predetermined recognition ability, stability, relative ease and low cost of preparation, and potential application in a wide range of target molecules [4,5,6]. These binding sites are held in place by the cross-linked polymer matrix and allow selective uptake. Based on the current work and extensive investigation in our laboratory, we attempt to explore the future development direction of chitosan MIPs
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