New biosourced chiral molecularly imprinted polymer: Synthesis, characterization, and evaluation of the recognition...

New biosourced chiral cross-linkers were reported for the first time in the synthesis of methyltestosterone (MT) chiral molecularly imprinted polymers (cMIPs). Isosorbide and isomannide, known as 1,4:3,6-dianhydrohexitols, were selected as starting diols. The cMIPs were synthesized following a noncovalent approach via thermal radical polymerization and monitored by Raman spectroscopy. These cross-linkers were fully characterized by ¹ H and ¹³ C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and high-resolution mass spectrometry. The cross-polarization magic angle spinning ¹³ C NMR, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and specific surface areas following the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) method were used to characterize the cMIPs. The effect of stereochemistry of cross-linkers on the reactivity of polymerization, morphology, and adsorption-recognition properties of the MIP was evaluated. The results showed that the cMIP exhibited an obvious improvement in terms of rebinding capacity for MT as compared with the nonimprinted polymer (NIP). The highest binding capacity was observed for cMIP-Is (27.298 mg g^-1 ) for high concentrations (500 mg L^-1 ). However, the isomannide homologue cMIP-Im showed higher recovery-up to 65% and capacity for low concentrations (15 mg L^-1 ). The experimental data were properly fitted by the Freundlich adsorption isothermal model.