Membrane-associated molecularly imprinted surfaces with tailor-made SiO2@polydopamine-based recognition sites for selective separation of artemisinin

Development of membrane-based molecularly imprinted material with rapid rebinding and high-permselectivity performance has become an urgent need in chemical separation and industrial production. Herein, the high-quality membrane-based designs were proposed for the preparation of SiO 2 @polydopamine blended nanocomposite imprinted membranes with hierarchical structure. The high-efficiency antimalarial drug , artemisinin, was used as template molecule during the newly-developed sol-gel artemisinin-imprinted strategy. Importantly in this work, instead of the direct construction of imprinting layers on membranes, the artemisinin-imprinted SiO 2 @polydopamine particles were initially synthesized followed by a phase conversion process to obtain the SPIMs. The SiO 2 -based artemisinin-imprinted polymers on PDA nanospheres would played imprinted-triggered roles for achieving specific artemisinin-imprinted sites. Meanwhile, amount of artemisinin-imprinted cavities and permselectivity were both optimized, high-permselectivity coefficients (more than 11.5), fast adsorption kinetics and enhanced rebinding capacity (45.89 mg g −1 ) could be obtained. That is to say, this new direction of the membrane’s design would become the further design and guide for selective separation membrane materials.