Molecular Imprinting and Functional Polymers for All Transducers and Applications.

The main challenge in developing a chemical sensor is the synthesis of recognition coatings, which are very sensitive and selective to analytes of interest. Molecular imprinting has proven to be the most innovative strategy for this purpose in functional polymer design in the last few decades. Moreover, the introduction of functional groups brings about new applications for all available transducers. Sensitivity and selectivity features of sensor coatings can be tuned by this approach. The strategy produces molecular cavities and interaction sites in sensor coatings. The synthesis of these tailored recognition materials is performed in an outstanding manner, saving time and the high costs of chemicals. Furthermore, intermolecular interactions between the analyte and chemical layers will generate sites that are complementary to the analyte. This procedure can easily be done, directly on a transducer surface, which entails engulfing the analyte by a prepolymer and crosslinking the polymeric material. These imprinted polymers form a robust recognition layer on the transducer surface, which cannot be peeled off and can withstand very harsh conditions, both in gaseous and liquid media. These recognition materials are very suitable, for small molecules and even large bioparticles.