Evaluation of new strategies to prepare templated polymers with sufficient oligosaccharide recognition capacity Original Research Article

As a low reloading capacity is a serious weakness for any recognition material, this study follows up two strategies on rising the overall amount of saccharides recognition on sugar-templated polymers. We proposed to increase the number of attractive binding forces inside the matrix: (a) by enlarging the binding strength of the incorporated sites; as well as (b) by using a relatively polar polymer matrix to enable multiple hydrogen bondings between the polymer backbone and the sugar-template during recognition experiments. Towards this end, we investigated the sugar binding capability of the copper(II) complex N,N-bis[(2-pyridylmethyl)-1,3-diaminopropan-2-ol]dicopper(II)(μ-acetato)diperchlorate ((bpdpo)Cu2) in solution and found the dinuclear copper(II) complex discriminating between various carbohydrates in solution already. On the other hand, we found increased saccharide-rebinding capacities in polar acrylates, which also exhibit a moderate selectivity between biologically relevant disaccharides.