Molecularly imprinted Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) from solid state polymerization

Abstract

Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs), specialized materials employed to create artificial receptors with a predetermined specificity and selectivity for a given template, were prepared from the monomer 3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene (EDOT). Its polymer, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT), was obtained through the solid state polymerization (SSP) in the presence of the selected template molecules, p-nitrophenol (PNP) and pyrene. The resulting conjugated MIPs, monitored by UV-Vis spectroscopy, exhibit the recognition toward their template molecules compared to non-imprinted polymers (NIPs) in the binding process. The results show that the specific adsorption values (Q) of PNP and pyrene molecules bound to the MIPs were 300.71 and 12.73 μmol/g, respectively. The rebinding capacities of the PNP-MIPs were 73.44%, while only 8.68% was obtained for pyrene-MIPs. These values indicated that the MIP prepared from SSP-PEDOT could be specifically imprinted with the relatively polar PNP template, but was not successful with the non-polar pyrene. The robustness, ease of preparation and low cost provide great promise to develop this material for on-site molecule-specific sensors.