title: Imprinting of Molecular Recognition Sites on Nanostructures and Its Applications in Chemosensors.
abstract: Biological receptors including enzymes, antibodies and active proteins have been widely used as the detection platform in a variety of chemo/biosensors and bioassays. However, the use of artificial host materials in chemical/biological detections has become increasingly attractive, because the synthetic recognition systems such as molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) usually have lower costs, higher physical/chemical stability, easier preparation and better engineering possibility than biological receptors. Molecular imprinting is one of the most efficient strategies to offer a synthetic route to artificial recognition systems by a template polymerization technique, and has attracted considerable efforts due to its importance in separation, chemo/biosensors, catalysis and biomedicine. Despite the fact that MIPs have molecular recognition ability similar to that of biological receptors, traditional bulky MIP materials usually exhibit a low binding capacity and slow binding kinetics to the target species. Moreover, the MIP materials lack the signal-output response to analyte binding events when used as recognition elements in chemo/biosensors or bioassays. Recently, various explorations have demonstrated that molecular imprinting nanotechniques may provide a potential solution to these difficulties. Many successful examples of the development of MIP-based sensors have also been reported during the past several decades. This review will begin with a brief introduction to the principle of molecular imprinting nanotechnology, and then mainly summarize various synthesis methodologies and recognition properties of MIP nanomaterials and their applications in MIP-based chemosensors. Finally, the future perspectives and efforts in MIP nanomaterials and MIP-based sensors are given.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Biomimetic Sensing & Advanced Robot Technology, Institute of Intelligent Machines, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, Anhui 230031, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Guijian
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Guan
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Biomimetic Sensing & Advanced Robot Technology, Institute of Intelligent Machines, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, Anhui 230031, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Bianhua
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Biomimetic Sensing & Advanced Robot Technology, Institute of Intelligent Machines, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, Anhui 230031, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Zhenyang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Biomimetic Sensing & Advanced Robot Technology, Institute of Intelligent Machines, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, Anhui 230031, P.R. China. zpzhang@iim.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Zhongping
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhang
keywords: Chemical detection; Molecularly imprinted polymers; Nanostructures; Sensors