Highly selective nanocomposite sorbents for the specific recognition of S-ibuprofen from structurally related compounds

Abstract

The aim of the present work was to synthesize highly homogeneous synthetic recognition units for the selective and specific separation of S-ibuprofen from its closely related structural analogues using molecular imprinting technology. The molecular imprinted polymer wrapped on functionalized multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT-MIP) was synthesized using S-ibuprofen as the template in the imprinting process. The characterization of the products and intermediates were done by FT-IR spectroscopy, PXRD, TGA, SEM and TEM techniques. The high regression coefficient value for Langmuir adsorption isotherm (R2 = 0.999) showed the homogeneous imprint sites and surface adsorption nature of the prepared polymer sorbent. The nano-MIP followed a second-order kinetics (R2 = 0.999) with a rapid adsorption rate which also suggested the formation of recognition sites on the surface of MWCNT-MIP. MWCNT-MIP showed 83.6 % higher rebinding capacity than its non-imprinted counterpart. The higher relative selectivity coefficient (k′) of the imprinted sorbent towards S-ibuprofen than that for its structural analogues evidenced the capability of the nano-MIP to selectively and specifically rebind the template rather than its analogues.