ENANTIOMERIC RECOGNITION BY MOLECULARLY IMPRINTED POLYMERS USING HYDROPHOBIC INTERACTIONS

Molecularly imprinted polymers prepared using acrylamide as the hydrog en bonding functional monomer exhibited good enantiomeric recognition properties in aqueous solutions. Our results indicate that the recogni tion improved with increased mobile phase water percentage and ionic s trength, and was also very much pH dependent upon the ionisation prope rties of the sample molecules. The results can be interpreted in terms of specific hydrophobic interactions between the enantiomeric species and the recognition sites of imprinted polymers. A study of substrate selectivity showed differences between a pure organic system and a wa ter/organic system as the mobile phases. The hydrophobicity of the tes t compounds was found to be an important parameter in determining the selectivity.