The imprinting process involves the following steps:

Pre-assembly of the template molecule and functional monomer

Securing the binding locations in place with the use of a crosslinking (poly)mer; this is done whilst the components are suspended in a porogenic solvent which facilitates the creation of pores in the surface of the resulting particle. These pores are necessary in order to access the formed binding sites.

Upon completion of this polymerisation step, the template moleculce can then be removed via washing with an extraction solvent. What is left is a binding site with extremely high selectivity and sensitivity. Both geometric and chemical factors must be satisfied for binding/recognition to take place.

There are a vast number of these binding sites present on the surface of a single (Molecularly Imprinted Polymer) MIP particle. These particles can then be immobilised onto an electrode surface to create a template/specific detection element

свернуть