Rational design and fabrication of surface molecularly imprinted polymers based on multi-boronic acid sites for selective capture glycoproteins

Increasing the number of recognition sites is an available way to improve the efficiency of the identification of surface molecular imprinting polymers. In this work, glycoprotein imprinted nanoparticles (SiO2-MIPs) based on multi-boronic acid sites are prepared via surface imprinting processes. Polyethylene polyamine (PPI), containing enough active amino groups, is firstly grafted to the surface of silica nanoparticles. Boronic acid molecules are post-modified onto silica nanoparticles via amine aldehyde condensation reaction, and then dopamine (DA) as the monomer is adopted to form a surface imprinted polymer layer onto the functionalized silica nanoparticles under a gentle condition after binding the template ovalbumin (OVA) molecules. As-prepared SiO2-MIPs have quick adsorption kinetics (rebinding equilibrium at 60 min), high maximum adsorption capacity (243.4 mg g−1), excellent adsorption selectivity (imprinting factor towards OVA is 4.82,), and good reusability after seven regeneration cycles (a slight decrease of about 5%). Furthermore, the high density of boronic acids and imprinting effect both play a key role in the enhanced recognition and rebinding OVA. Moreover, this work overcomes the influence of steric hindrance and then the OVA molecules can access the recognition sites of SiO2-MIPs easily.