Advanced strategies for characterizing molecular imprinted polymers

Abstract

In order to fully realize the potential of MIPs within applications where the speed of binding and the dynamics of the binding process are essential (e.g. chem/bio sensing), it is important that MIP characterization reproducibly covers both dynamic/kinetic performance and equilibrium behaviour, ideally via transferable and unified analysis protocols applicable to all kinds of MIPs. Consequently, a more detailed analysis of the post-synthesis treatment of MIPs is necessary to evaluate and fundamentally understand the potential of MIPs serving as adsorbing media correctly, which summarizes the motivation for the studies performed within this thesis. Advanced strategies were developed for the treatment of MIPs immediately after the synthesis of the polymer by introducing innovative clean-up methods ensuring a more exhaustive extraction of template and impurities prior to the analysis of the polymer. For obtaining equilibrium and kinetic data on thus synthesized MIPs and NIPs, a flow-cell-based setup was developed, and a theoretical basis facilitating the understanding on equilibrium and kinetic data was developed. Furthermore, high-throughput methods for the generation of sufficient quantities of equilibrium binding data have been investigated along with potential problems and limitations occurring during the comparison of different experimental methods. Finally, this thesis is concluded with a proposed redefinition of one of the key parameters commonly used during MIP/NIP evaluation - the so-called imprinting factor - to more precisely render the significance of this figure of merit.