Novel Thermosensitive Core–Shell Surface Molecularly Imprinted Polymers Based on SiO₂ for the Selective Adsorption of Sulfamethazine

Abstract

In this research, a novel, sulfamethazine, thermosensitive, molecularly-imprinted polymer (MIP) with an obvious core⁻shell structure for the enrichment of sulfamethazine (SMZ), which involved temperature sensitive monomer N-Isopropylacrylamide, functional monomer methacrylic acid and cross-linking agents ethyleneglycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) and N,N′-methylenebisacrylamide, was successfully compounded using the surface polymerization method. To ensure the best experimental group, we designed and compared three groups of controlled experiments of MIPs with different crosslinking agents. When the adsorption temperature was almost the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) of Poly(N-Isopropylacrylamide), the preparative MIPs showed outstanding adsorption capacity and specific identification to sulfamethazine. Moreover, this allowed the MIPs to better facilitate by combining the template molecules, as well as optimizing the imprinting factor. In addition, after 80 min, the adsorption of the MIPs leveled off and remained constant, and the adsorption quantity reached (a maximum of) at 8.1 mg·g−1.

Keywords

• thermosensitive molecularly imprinted polymers
• surface imprinting
• sulfamethazine