Reshaping the imprinting strategy through the thermo-responsive moiety-derived "deep eutectic solvents" effect

As a new concept having emerged in last few years, the "deep eutectic solvents" (DESs) effect integrated into the imprinting technology inevitably exposes design limitations of stimuli-responsive molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs), as well as inadequate analysis of the adsorption performance of MIPs. Herein, a simple yet defined N -isopropylacrylamide/(3-acrylamidopropyl) trimethylammonium chloride (NIPAM/APTMAC) binary DESs system was proposed to prepare intelligent MIPs with thermosensitivity. Accordingly, magnetic and thermo-responsive MIPs based on functional monomers-derived DESs (TMDESs-MIPs1) were synthesized, revealing DESs effectregulated affinity/kinetics for the enhanced adsorption capability, eco-friendly thermo-regulated elution for high release efficiency, and simple magnetic separation, along with superior selectivity to rhein (RH) and good regeneration ability. TM-DESs-MIPs1 were utilized to extract RH from Cassiae semen samples coupled with high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), yielding satisfactory recoveries (79.47% -110.82%) and low limits of detection (LOD) (16.67 mu g/L). Another two kinds of MIPs adopting the thermo-responsive moiety-derived DESs effect strategy further demonstrated great applicability of such intelligent MIPs for analyses of complicated samples. (c) 2023 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Chinese Chemical Society and Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.