Structured water and water-polymer interactions in hydrogels of molecularly imprinted polymers

Recently, molecular imprinting technology has fleetly developed for applications in different fields. It shows great potential in sensor design, drug delivery, chromatography separation, catalysis, chiral synthesis, and especially in the molecular recognition field. In this work, a cubic model of a hydrogel network was developed and an infinite hydrogel backbone network was constructed for molecular dynamics simulation. The water structure and water-polymer interaction was investigated from the radial distribution function and the viewpoint of the hydrogen-bonding system. It is found that the hydrogen bonds between polymer and water strongly depress the diffusion of water molecules and enhance the structure of water in the system. The greater the network mesh size of the polymer, the weaker the structure of the water. The decreasing of the density of hydrogen bonds between polymer and water is the major factor that leads to the weakening of water structure.