Abstract
In recent years, molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) have become an excellent solution to the selective and sensitive determination of target molecules in complex matrices where other similar and relative structural compounds could coexist. Although MIPs show the inherent properties of the polymers, including stability, robustness, and easy/cheap synthesis, some of their characteristics can be enhanced, or new functionalities can be obtained when nanoparticles are incorporated in their polymeric structure. The great variety of nanoparticles available significantly increase the possibility of finding the adequate design of nanostructured MIP for each analytical problem. Moreover, different structures (i.e., monolithic solids or MIPs micro/nanoparticles) can be produced depending on the used synthesis approach. This review aims to summarize and describe the most recent and innovative strategies since 2015, based on the combination of MIPs with nanoparticles. The role of the nanoparticles in the polymerization, as well as in the imprinting and adsorption efficiency, is also discussed through the review.
Highlights
Imprinted polymers (MIPs) are selective sorbents for extracting a target molecule, which essentially mimics the ‘lock-and-key’ binding mechanism occurring in natural biorecognition.To achieve this goal, a template molecule, which can be the target compound, a fragment of it, or a molecule with a size, shape, and functional groups similar to the target one, is added to the polymerization mixture to interact with the monomers forming a complex [1,2]
The macromolecularly functional monomers were polymerized onto the surface of silica particles in the presence of the template protein, resulting in a Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) with an imprinting factor of 5.8, which was higher than obtained by the used of micromolecularly functional monomers that provided an imprinting factor of 3.4
Several advances have been made in the field of MIP technology in the last decades
Summary
Imprinted polymers (MIPs) are selective sorbents for extracting a target molecule, which essentially mimics the ‘lock-and-key’ binding mechanism occurring in natural biorecognition. To achieve this goal, a template molecule, which can be the target compound, a fragment of it, or a molecule with a size, shape, and functional groups similar to the target one (dummy template), is added to the polymerization mixture to interact with the monomers forming a complex [1,2]. The resulting MIPs have the inherent advantages of synthetic polymers, such as high mechanical stability in a wide range of solvents, pH, and temperature These polymers are very robust even at elevated pressure and offer the possibility of preparing them in different types of formats/supports. Different synthetic routes to obtain nanostructured MIPs are described emphasizing the role of nanoparticles during the polymerization stage, as well as their role during extraction/detection of the target analyte
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