Preparation of a novel mixed non-covalent and semi-covalent molecularly imprinted membrane with hierarchical pores for separation of genistein in Radix Puerariae Lobatae

In this work, a novel mixed non-covalent and semi-covalent molecularly imprinted membrane (MIM) with hierarchical pores was prepared by cryopolymerization at −18 °C and using PEG2000 and dimethyl sulfoxide ice crystals as the pore templates. The free-standing MIM was characterized by scanning electron microscope and nitrogen adsorption-desorption isotherms, and the results confirmed the formation of the hierarchical pore structure . In the static adsorption, membrane permeation and dead-end filtration experiments, the results indicated that the mixed non-covalent and semi-covalent molecular imprinting was a good method to improve the performance of MIM which had a good adsorption selectivity toward genistein due to the presence of the imprinted sites in MIM and possessed strong imprinting efficiency toward genistein even in some similar compound mixture or extract of Radix Puerariae Lobatae.