Development of a molecularly imprinted polymer for pyridoxine using an ion-pair as template

One of the main challenges in the molecularly imprinted polymers (MIP) field is the proper MIP design for water-soluble compounds because of appearance of serious drawbacks in polar solvents and insolubility of those compounds in non-polar solvents which are commonly used for MIP synthesis. In this work a novel and simple method for synthesis of molecularly imprinted polymers for a water-soluble compound was introduced. Pyridoxine was chosen as a target molecule and the ion-pair complex formed between pyridoxine ion (Py⁺) and dodecyl sulfate ion (DS⁻) was transferred into the chloroform via liquid-liquid extraction. Then polymerization was carried out in chloroform. The molecular mechanics and density functional theory were proposed to screen proper monomer. Binding energy, ΔE, of a template and a monomer as a measure of their interaction was considered. Ion-pair [Py⁺-DS⁻] was supposed as a template molecule and acrylic acid, methacrylic acid, allyamine, vinylpridine and 2-hydroxy ethyl methacrylate were as tested monomers. The MIP synthesized using acrylic acid showed the highest selectivity to pyridoxine as predicted from the ΔE calculation. The obtained MIP showed very high affinity against vitamin B6 in comparison to non-imprinted polymers (NIP). It was proved that the obtained MIP with introduced method was much better than that prepared in methanol as porogen. It was showed that the MIP prepared by this new method could be used as an adsorber for extraction and determination of pyridoxine in real and synthetic samples.