Fabrication of Functional Molecularly Imprinted Materials using Nanoparticle Building Blocks
Abstract: Popular Abstract in Undetermined Nanoparticles have attracted great interest in biomedicine and material science due to their unique and unconventional properties. Polymer nanoparticles containing pre-designed molecular recognition sites can be synthesized using molecular imprinting technique. Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) have high affinity and selectivity that are similar to antibodies, and have been named as artificial antibodies. Because of their very high stability and low production cost, MIP materials can be used to replace antibodies in many practical applications, e.g. product purification, diagnostics, removal of environmental pollutants, and in different analytical systems for analysis of complex samples. In this thesis, I discuss how new functions (such as magnetic susceptibility, fluorescence, and catalytic properties) can be introduced to MIP materials using highly efficient chemical conjugation methods. The new composite materials obtained not only possess high molecular recognition selectivity, but also become easy to handle in practical applications. The main focus is the use of nanoparticles as building blocks to prepare new imprinted materials with novel properties, e.g. to enable direct molecular separation in water. Firstly, different strategies to immobilize MIP nanoparticles through physical entrapment are reviewed. Secondly, several chemical approaches are introduced, where the imprinted nanoparticles are conjugated with other functional nanoparticles through covalent bonding. During the preparation, the nanoparticles are first modified with specific chemical groups, which allow the nanoparticles to react with other nanoparticles (Paper I). New water-compatible crosslinking reactions and light activated crosslinking reactions are investigated (Paper I, V). The MIP composites obtained are characterized using different analytical techniques. Several multifunctional materials have been developed in this thesis, including magnetic composites allowing fast separation (Paper II, V), macroporous affinity gels enabling treatment of complex samples (Paper IV), fluorescent and multifunctional microcontainers as new sensing and delivery systems (Paper III). In the last, fully water-compatible MIP beads are prepared from nanoparticle-stabilized emulsions (Paper VI).
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