Facile synthesis of flower-like sandwich-structured molecularly imprinted polymers for efficient recognition of target protein from egg white

In this work, a facile method for synthesis of flower-like sandwich-structured molecularly imprinted polymers (NiO@PDA/MIPs) was proposed for protein recognition. Polydopamine modified flower-like NiO was used as substrate to immobilize the target protein (ovalbumin, OVA), and dopamine was utilized as functional monomer to form the imprinted layer. The whole preparation process was conducted in aqueous solution at room temperature. The key preparation conditions were studied systematically. Owing to the large surface-to-volume of the flower-like structure and the multifunctional groups on the polydopamine layer, the NiO@PDA/MIPs showed large binding capacity (143.2 mg/g), efficient adsorption kinetics (60 min) and excellent selectivity toward OVA. Meanwhile, the NiO@PDA/MIPs possessed satisfactory stability and reusability. Finally, successful capture of OVA from egg white suggested its potential value in practical applications.