Preparation of metallic pivot-based imprinted monolith for polar template

One of the main challenges in MIPs preparation is the proper MIP monolith design for water-soluble compounds due to the difficulty in satisfying the demands of both good column permeability and affinity to polar template. A new strategy of metallic pivot in a ternary porogenic system of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO)-dimethylformamide (DMF)-1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate ([Bmim]BF4) was suggested to solve this problem. An imprinted monolithic column with high porosity and good permeability was synthesized using a mixture of methyl gallate (template), 4-vinylpyridine, ethylene glycol dimethacrylate, and cobalt acetate. Some polymerization factors, such as template-monomer molar ratio and the composition of the ionic liquid, on the imprinting effect of the resulting MIPs monoliths were systematically investigated. In a mobile phase of acetonitrile-buffer, the greatest imprinting factor of 10.9 was obtained on the MIPs monolith with the optimized polymerization parameters. Thermodynamic analysis for separation demonstrated that the separation between the template and its analogs on the ion-mediated MIPs monolith is an enthalpy-controlled process.