Recent advances in molecular imprinting technology: current status, challenges and highlighted applications

Molecular imprinting technology (MIT) concerns formation of selective sites in a polymer matrix with the memory of a template. Recently, molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) have aroused extensive attention and been widely applied in many fields, such as solid-phase extraction, chemical sensors and artificial antibodies owing to their desired selectivity, physical robustness, thermal stability, as well as low cost and easy preparation. With the rapid development of MIT as a research hotspot, it faces a number of challenges, involving biological macromolecule imprinting, heterogeneous binding sites, template leakage, incompatibility with aqueous media, low binding capacity and slow mass transfer, which restricts its applications in various aspects. This critical review briefly reviews the current status of MIT, particular emphasis on significant progresses of novel imprinting methods, some challenges and effective strategies for MIT, and highlighted applications of MIPs. Finally, some significant attempts in further developing MIT are also proposed (236 references).