Rationally designing molecularly imprinted polymers toward a highly specific recognition by using a stoichiometric molecular self-assembly

This article presents work on designing a highly specific imprinted polymer for molecular recognition. Based on a stoichiometric molecular self-assembly, the imprinted material was prepared using adenine as the template and methacrylic acid as the functional monomer. The result indicates that the stoichiometric molecular self-assembly plays a positive role in increasing the specificity of prepared materials, so as to adsorb more for the template but less for its analogue. Furthermore, the results indicate that higher or lower extents of self-assembly cause a dramatic decrease in the specificity. Related information indicates that these changes can be an increase in the match of template and the binding framework, which thereby makes the polymer capable of specifically recognizing the imprint species.