The specificity of a chlorphenamine–imprinted polymer and its application

A chlorphenamine–imprinted polymer was prepared in this study. Chromatographic analysis showed that the retentivity and selectivity of the imprinted polymer were greatly strengthened through molecular imprinting. As a consequence, chlorphenamine could be easily separated from diphenhydramine. Ionic interaction was proved to be the main power for the imprinted polymer to bind chlorphenamine. The strong extraction ability of the imprinted polymer for chlorphenamine in aqueous solution was evaluated further. It was shown that chlorphenamine, as low as 0.02 μmol l−1, could be concentrated by 50 times with a recovery of more than 90% at pH 5. This study gave the potential of using the imprinted polymer for solid-phase extraction of practical samples.