Selective recognition of sesamol using molecularly imprinted polymers containing magnetic wollastonite

The magnetic molecularly imprinted polymers (MMIPs) have been synthesized using piperonal molecules as dummy template and magnetic wollastonite composites as support. The resulting composites were applied to selective recognition of sesamol from aqueous solution. MMIPs were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) analysis, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). MMIPs were demonstrated with an imprinted polymer film (90–100 nm) and exhibited magnetic property ( M s =8.60 emu/g) and thermal stability. The effective average diameter of the Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticles was about 10 nm and the thickness of magnetic film was about 160 nm. Batch mode adsorption studies were carried out to investigate the specific adsorption equilibrium, kinetics and selective recognition. The Langmuir isotherm model was fitted to the equilibrium data better than the Freundlich model, and the kinetic properties were well described by the pseudo-second-order equation. The value of E a in this study was 5.35 kJ/mol for MMIPs. In addition, the selective recognition experiments demonstrated that MMIPs have specific recognition ability toward sesamol.