Film-like bacterial cellulose based molecularly imprinted materials for highly efficient recognition and adsorption of cresol isomers

Abstract

Molecularly imprinted materials allow the recognition and separation of specific target molecules, rendering wide applications in environmental and biological fields. However, traditional design with dense structure has the drawbacks of low exposure of active sites only on the surface and easy pore blockage. Here, we describe the attempt to use biomass bacterial cellulose with film-like shape, three-dimensional hollow nanofibrous structure, and high surface hydrophilicity, as substrate for the construction of molecularly imprinted materials. Our samples exhibited excellent selective adsorption properties including high adsorption capacity, fast adsorption kinetics, and high imprinting factor towards target cresol isomers, i.e. o-cresol, m-cresol, and p-cresol, as well as high selectivity towards a mixture of structural analogues. We attribute these remarkable properties of our sample to the intrinsic advantages of our design, i.e. the exposure of more active adsorption sites, enhanced wettability, and facilitated bulk mass transfer. Moreover, our samples also showed easy regenerability and excellent reusability. We reckon our materials to have strong potential for the highly efficient recognition and adsorption of more target molecules for various applications.