Bio-inspired synthesis of molecularly imprinted nanocomposite membrane for selective recognition and separation of artemisinin

Inspired from the highly bioadhesive performance of mussel protein, a simple, yet efficient synthetic method for efficiently imprinting of Artemisinin (Ars) was developed to prepare the bio-inspired molecularly imprinted membranes (MIMs) via atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP). In this work, attributed to the unique properties of polydopamine (pDA) modified layers and ATRP technology, the uniform recognition sites for efficiently selective extraction of the Ars with high stability could be obtained on the MIMs surfaces. In addition, the maximum adsorption capacity of the MIMs is 158.85 mg g^-1 by the Langmuir isotherm model, which is remarkable higher than NIMs. Additionally, because of the formation of the uniform specific recognition cavities on membrane surfaces, the as-prepared MIMs exhibited a rapid adsorption dynamics and well-fitted for the pseudo-second-order rate equation, also, possessed an excellent per-selectivity performance (β_{artemether/Ars} values is 0.18) of template molecule, which clearly demonstrated the potential value of this method in the selective separation and purification of Ars.