Solid phase synthesis of molecularly imprinted polymers for analytical and life science applications

Molecularly imprinted polymers are highly valued in diverse fields due to their overall stability, molecular recognition capabilities, and low-cost of preparation. Solid-phase synthesis has been an important imprinting strategy developed in the past decade. Distinct from conventional imprinting methods, the solid-phase synthesis approach immobilizes the template molecules onto the substrate. The immobilization of template molecules not only avoids the leakage of template molecules but also enables the reuse of template molecules and improving specificity of polymer binding sites. During preparation, low-affinity molecularly imprinted polymer nanoparticles (nanoMIPs) can be separated while high affinity nanoMIPs are subsequently collected. Remarkably, nanoMIPs have demonstrated comparable or even superior performance to biological antibodies in diverse biomedical and trace detection applications. This comprehensive review covers the whole process of preparation, characterization, and application of nanoMIPs synthesized through the solid-phase synthesis. Furthermore, it provides an analysis of the status of the technique and a discussion on future development.