Synthesis of a Nanostructured Molecularly Imprinted Acrylic acid-Based Network Copolymer as a Solid Sorbent for the Quercetin extraction

A straightforward approach for the extraction of the quercetin was carried out by a nanoporous molecularly imprinted acrylic acid-based network copolymer as asolid sorbent. This technique involves a molecular template (quercetin) which is surrounded by functional monomers and are subsequently co-polymerized in the presence of an excess of the cross linkers. In this process, three-dimensional binding sites are generated that are complementary to the quercetin template in terms of size, shape and position of functional groups. After removal of the imprinting quercetin template, the nanostructured polymer can therefore specifically recognize and re-bind the same or structurally very similar molecules. The synthesized MIP by bulk polymerization was exhibited a good tendency to absorb the quercetin template in a solid phase extraction (SPE) system. The prepared MIP achieved a binding capacity of 169 mg/grfor the quercetin in acetonitrile-water (1:1 v/v) solvent. Imaging by scanning electron microscope (SEM) was carried out to determine the surface morphology of the prepared MIP.