Highly selective recognition of L-phenylalanine with molecularly imprinted polymers based on imidazolyl amino acid chiral ionic liquid

Several amino acid chiral ionic liquids were introduced as functional monomers to prepare molecularly imprinted polymers for specific recognition of L-phenylalanine. Among them, the imprinted polymers L-Phe@MIPs based on [ViImC3][L-Pro] showed the best selective recognition ability for L-phenylalanine. A series of experiments such as dynamic adsorption, static adsorption, and competitive adsorption were conducted to investigate the specific recognition ability and adsorption capacity of the L-Phe@MIPs. It is found that the adsorption efficiency to L-phenylalanine on L-Phe@MIPs was 3.11 times higher than that to D-phenylalanine. All the results demonstrated that the L-Phe@MIPs possessed good recognition and relatively high adsorption efficiency for L-phenylalanine. Besides, the recovery of L-phenylalanine was above 98%, and the L-Phe@MIPs exhibited good reusability.