Imprinted polymer beads featuring both predefined multiple-point interaction and accessible binding sites for precise recognition of 2′-deoxyadenosine

“Tailor-made” formation of complementary binding sites via lock-and-key molecular binding mechanism is critical for selective adsorption of target molecules in environmental and chemical engineering fields. However, the innovative design of molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) remains a challenging task. Here, photo-crosslinked functional polymer building blocks consisting of monomeric methacrylic acid (MAA), 1-(vinylbenzyl)thymidine (VBT) and post-crosslinked monomeric cinnamoyloxyethyl methacrylate (CEMA) were firstly synthesized. MIPs beads (PC-MIPs) were then prepared by emulsion droplet microreactor, and finally their precise recognition of 2'-deoxyadenosine (dA) was investigated by batch mode adsorption. The prepared PC-MIPs microspheres have a large number of voids on the surface with interconnected cavities inside, and the bubble-like framework inside may be caused by the full encapsulation of bubbles from the low boiling point isolated phase. Due to the high density of accessible imprinted sites and strong interaction with dA, the maximum monolayer adsorption capacity of PC-MIPs was calculated to be 134.5 μmol g−1 for dA, surpassing most of the reported dA-imprinted sorbents. In addition, unique advantages of the post-crosslinking strategy combined with the emulsion template method exhibited good selectivity (imprinting factor higher than 2.71) and high stability, as well as excellent recyclability toward dA. Moreover, 82.4 % of dA was extracted by PC-MIPs from spiked human urine samples. Therefore, our work demonstrated an alternate strategy to design polymers bearing precise molecular recognition capability, and provided a new perspective for dA enrichment from biological samples.