Confined Growth of Teamed Boronate Affinity Molecularly Imprinted Sorbents for Highly Selective Enrichment of Cis-Diol Flavonoids

Agricultural waste peanut shells are rich in cis -diol flavonoid luteolin (LTL). However, conventional separation materials suffer from insufficient specific sites, binding limitations only under alkaline environments, and poor anti-interference performance in complex matrices. Herein, an integrated fabrication strategy combining in situ polymerization in mesoporous soft confined space and teamed boronate (TBA)-functional molecular imprinting technology is innovatively proposed. The hierarchical substrate of GO@MS was covalently assembled via a thiol–ene click reaction, and a boronate affinity-imprinted polymer was grown confinedly inside mesoporous channels. The TBA molecular group as a functional monomer would be used for specific recognition of LTL under neutral conditions. As a result, the prepared MI-GO@MS@GLYMO-TBA exhibits high binding capacity (61.78 μmol g –1 ) for LTL at 308 K under physiological pH (7.4), with an equilibrium time of 360 min. In addition, MI-GO@MS@GLYMO-TBA could be recycled six times with a slight loss of 8.00% in adsorption. Meanwhile, the commercially available LTL with 85% purity could be easily enriched and further extracted with high selectivity (up to 93.67%). Remarkably, the purified LTL solutions displayed lasting antibacterial performance against Staphylococcus aureus ( S. aureus ) with an inhibition zone of 12.15 mm. Therefore, the MI-GO@MS@GLYMO-TBA nanocomposite could be potentially developed as a feasible and efficient method to achieve the goals of green sustainable chemistry for precise identification and separation of LTL from complex samples from agricultural wastes.