Design and Preparation of Molecularly Imprinted Membranes for Selective Separation of Acteoside

Molecular imprinting technology (MIT), often described as a method of making a molecular lock to match a molecular key, is a technique for the creation of molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) with tailor-made binding sites complementary to the template molecules in shape, size and functional groups. Owing to their unique features of structure predictability, recognition specificity and application universality, MIPs have found a wide range of applications in various fields. Herein, we propose to comprehensively review the recent advances in molecular imprinting including versatile perspectives and applications, concerning novel preparation technologies and strategies of MIT, and highlight the applications of MIPs. The fundamentals of MIPs involving essential elements, preparation procedures and characterization methods are briefly outlined. Smart MIT for MIPs is especially highlighted including ingenious MIT (surface imprinting, nanoimprinting, etc.), special strategies of MIT (dummy imprinting, segment imprinting, etc.) and stimuli-responsive MIT (single/dual/multi-responsive technology). By virtue of smart MIT, new formatted MIPs gain popularity for versatile applications, including sample pretreatment/chromatographic separation (solid phase extraction, monolithic column chromatography, etc.) and chemical/biological sensing (electrochemical sensing, fluorescence sensing, etc.). Finally, we propose the remaining challenges and future perspectives to accelerate the development of MIT, and to utilize it for further developing versatile MIPs with a wide range of applications (650 references).

In order to achieve strong specific recognition and remarkable synergy between adsorption and photocatalysis, carbon nanosheets supported TiO2 (CT) was designed and embellished by molecular imprinting technology with ciprofloxacin (CIP) as template. The molecular imprinted CT (CT-MI) product exhibited remarkable synergy of adsorption-photocatalysis and high selectivity in both aspects, benefitted from specific recognition of imprinted layer, strong carbon adsorption and electroconductivity, and enhanced photocatalysis. Compared to the competitive pollutant, sulfamethoxazole (SMZ) in this study, selectivity coefficient was 7.2 for adsorption and 3.2 for photocatalysis, respectively. This is superior to most of the imprinted photocatalysts reported in the literature. In addition, effect of mass ratio between TiO2 matrix to imprinted polymers, as well as water quality and composition, to the performance of final product was studied and favorable conditions were proposed. Electron transfer mode, selective recognition mode, and antibiotics degradation mechanism and pathways were also illustrated based on trapping experiments and HPLC-MS technology etc. This study confirmed that alliance between molecular imprinting, carbon nanosheets and well dispersed photocatalyst possessed broad prospect of applications in specific recognition and selective degradation of a highly toxic pollutant in a variety of mixed systems.