Microreactor-Based Synthesis of Molecularly Imprinted Polymer Beads Used for Explosive Detection

Abstract

Molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) beads based on acrylate formulations have been successfully synthesized in two different types of microreactors capable of generating spherical prepolymer droplets of controlled size in continuous segmented flow processes. After polymerizing and curing the droplets monodisperse acrylate particles have been obtained. Particle sizes have been adjusted in a wide range from 10 to 140 µm by choosing appropriate flow rates of the continuous and the disperse phase. By adding trinitrotoluene (TNT) as a template and PEG as a coporogen to the disperse phase MIP beads with TNT-selective sites and a sufficiently high porosity have been synthesized, as required, for explosive detection techniques.

Current trends in explosive detection techniques

“…into MIP application using both a nanoplotter and a spin coating device to assess the resulting quality of the layers [113] as well as the use of a continuous segmented flow microreaction process to allow uniform sized pre-polymer droplets to be generated. This enabled the size required to be defined, so minimising the need to sieve before use in columns [114].…”

Synthesis of polymer particles and capsules employing microfluidic techniques

“…Among the polymer systems investigated are divinylbenzene [7,11] , acrylates (e.g., hexanediol diacrylate [12] , ethylene glycol dimethacrylate [15,19] , tripropylene glycol diacrylate [20] , pentaerythritol triacrylate [20] ), and different microgels [21 -23] . By applying a coflow of two monomer solutions, Janus-type particles were also synthesized ( Figure 4 ) [12,14,24] .…”

“…In a recent work [27] , polyacrylamide particles incorporating silver nanoparticles were produced as on-chip probes for microfluidic surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). Finally, the functionalization of polymer particles can also be realized in microfluidic processes, for example, by synthesizing porous particles like molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) beads, which are used for the trace detection of analytes and for chromatographic purposes [19,28,29] .…”

A new sensitive organic/inorganic hybrid material based on titanium oxide for the potentiometric detection of iron(III)

“…Finding new systems to detect, discriminate and quantify important chemical species with a high sensitivity and selectivity is still an active field for many electric applications like explosive detection [1,2], food quality control [3][4][5], environmental measurements [6][7][8] and the detection of biomolecules [9][10][11]. An interesting and promising route to develop high performance ion sensors in liquid media is the use of sensitive hybrid materials designed with a specific ionophore covalently linked or trapped in an inorganic host.…”