Synthesis and characterisation of molecularly imprinted polymers for Azithromycin in solid phase extraction

Molecular imprinting is a technique that enables the preparation of synthetic receptors in a highly cross-linked polymer matrix. The imprinted solid material ideally contains cavities that have a shape and functional groups complementary to the imprinted template molecule. This technology has found numerous potential applications in synthesis, drug screening and delivery, catalysis, solid phase extraction (SPE), as artificial enzymes and as antibody mimics. Generally, two different approaches, based on covalent and non-covalent imprinting are used for the preparation of artificial receptors, mainly by bulk polymerization of vinylic monomers mixtures by free radical initiation. This technique of polymerization provides, after grinding and sieving, molecular imprinted polymers (MIPs) with large size particles distribution, slow binding kinetics, high non-specific binding interactions, and a wide distribution of affinity constants. To overcome these limitations, many efforts have been devoted towards the development of other polymerization techniques, as well as the development of new imprinting approaches. As a consequence, several polymerization methods, such as precipitation and emulsion polymerization, have been optimized for molecular imprinting purposes and have enabled the production of materials with more homogeneous and monodispersed micro- and nano-sphere particles. In this research molecularly imprinted polymers for azithromycin is synthesized by mini-emulsion polymerization. The synthesized polymer particles both prior to and after leaching have been characterized by UV and IR studies. A series of experimental analyses including SEM, TGA, DLS and binding analyses demonstrated that the porous structure was responsible for much of the binding capability of the MIPs