Study on the synthesis and performance of caffeine molecularly imprinted polymer micro-spheres via precipitation polymerization

Molecularly imprinted polymers(MIPs) were prepared via precipitation,with methacrylic acid as the functional monomer and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate as the cross-linker in acetonitrile solution using caffeine as the template molecule and 2,2′-azobis-isobutyronitrile as the initiator.The effects of the amount of cross-linker,functional monomer,initiator,the volume of solvent were examined.Equilibrium binding experiments was used to investigate the binding ability to template molecule,and the results revealed that the MIPs showed specific binding affinity to caffeine.