Water-compatible surface imprinting of ‘Saccharin sodium’ on silica surface for selective recognition and detection in aqueous solution

In this work, a saccharin sodium imprinted nanoparticles composite material has been successfully synthesized in aqueous solution. This molecular imprinted material has promising practical utility in the detection of saccharin sodium. First, we synthesized SiO 2 nanoparticles, followed by the modification of functional amino group. Then we used functionalized SiO 2 @NH 2 as the cores, saccharin sodium as the template, acrylic acid (AA) as the functional monomer and ammonium persulphate (APS) as the initiator. Molecularly imprinted nanoparticles (MIPs) were synthesized by surface-imprinted polymerization under airtight tubes at 60   °C for 12   h. MIPs were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), and thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA). The binding experiments were shown to have relatively high adsorption capacity (8.965   mg   g −1 ) and selective recognition ability over structurally related compounds. Therefore, MIPs provide a sensitive and selective approach and offer the potential to become a new key for the detection of saccharin sodium.