Interface imprinted polymers with well-oriented recognition sites for selective purification of hemoglobin

Area of Science:

• Polymer Chemistry
• Materials Science
• Bioseparations

Background:

• Molecular imprinting is a powerful technique for creating selective recognition sites in polymers.
• Traditional methods face challenges in creating stable and effective imprint sites, particularly for biomacromolecules.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a novel strategy for designing interface molecularly imprinted membranes (iMIMs) using sacrificial metal oxide particles.
• To utilize zinc oxide (ZnO) particles as sacrificial templates for creating imprint sites for bovine hemoglobin (BHb).
• To evaluate the performance of the developed iMIMs for BHb separation.

Main Methods:

• Synthesized polyacrylic acid-based membranes using bulk polymerization with ZnO particles adsorbed with BHb.
• Removed BHb-ZnO particles post-polymerization to create imprint sites.
• Characterized the membranes using FTIR, RS, SEM, BET, and TGA.
• Evaluated BHb rebinding capacity, selectivity, adsorption isotherms, and kinetics.

Main Results:

• The iMIMs exhibited a high specific rebinding capacity of 65.98 mg/g for BHb.
• Excellent selectivity towards BHb was achieved with a separation factor of 6.78.
• Adsorption followed Langmuir isotherms (R² = 0.9944) with Qmax = 73.53 mg/g and pseudo-second-order kinetics (R² = 0.9912).
• ZnO particles facilitated imprint cavity preservation, template removal, and improved rebinding kinetics.

Conclusions:

• The novel sacrificial ZnO particle strategy effectively creates imprint sites for biomacromolecule separation.
• The developed iMIMs offer a simple, efficient, and selective method for BHb separation.
• This approach holds promise for various biomacromolecule separation applications.