Abstract
Molecular imprinting is a well-established technology to mimic antibody-antigen interaction in a synthetic platform. Molecularly imprinted polymers and nanomaterials usually possess outstanding recognition capabilities. Imprinted nanostructured materials are characterized by their small sizes, large reactive surface area and, most importantly, with rapid and specific analysis of analytes due to the formation of template driven recognition cavities within the matrix. The excellent recognition and selectivity offered by this class of materials towards a target analyte have found applications in many areas, such as separation science, analysis of organic pollutants in water, environmental analysis of trace gases, chemical or biological sensors, biochemical assays, fabricating artificial receptors, nanotechnology, etc. We present here a concise overview and recent developments in nanostructured imprinted materials with respect to various sensor systems, e.g., electrochemical, optical and mass sensitive, etc. Finally, in light of recent studies, we conclude the article with future perspectives and foreseen applications of imprinted nanomaterials in chemical sensors.
Highlights
The molecular imprinting technique produces complex polymers with template-specific interaction sites or cavities within the polymer structure
Titania hybrid Imp-nanospheres were fabricated by precipitation reaction using 3-(trimethoxysilyl)propyl methacrylate as the coupling agent. The results indicated their faster adsorption kinetics and that they were an attractive choice for sensor application [49]
Mini-emulsion polymerization is another promising alternative for the synthesis of Imp-nanospheres, which leads to the development of affinity-based [50] optical sensors [51]
Summary
The molecular imprinting technique produces complex polymers with template-specific interaction sites or cavities within the polymer structure. A large number of imprinted nanomaterials have already been developed, such as imprinted nanoparticles (Imp-NPs) [3], imprinted nanocomposites (Imp-NCs) [4] and imprinted hybrid materials [5], for a variety of applications, such as separation science [6], molecular recognition [7] and chemical sensing of different analytes [8]. Imprinted nanomaterials have gained much importance, due to their foremost advantages, such as high surface area, large number of predetermined recognition sites, high chemical and thermal stability, comparative simplicity, low preparation cost and potential application to a variety of analytes [9,10]. The type and nature of different imprinted materials, a comparison of their morphology and ultimate applications in different fields are exclusively discussed along with their potential growth, application and future prospects
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