Synthesis and Evaluating of Nanoporous Molecularly Imprinted Polymers for Extraction of Quercetin as a Bioactive Component of Medicinal Plants

In this work, the template, monomer and cross-linker with the ratio of 1:8:40 were used to synthesize Molecularly Imprinted Polymers (MIPs) for extraction of the bioactive chemical compounds from some traditional herbs as a sorbent material. Quercetin, Methacrylic Acid (MAA), Trimethylolpropanetrimethacrylate (TRIM) and Tetrahydrofuran (THF) were used as a template, functional monomer, cross-linker and porogen, respectively. Polymer particles have been evaluated by Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), Field Emission Scan Electron Microscopy (FESEM), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET). The produced nanoporous MIPs, with a good specific surface area 167.899 m2/g comparatively to Non-Imprinted Polymers (NIPs), exhibited a good affinity to quercetin with binding capacity of 392.08 mg/g in acetonitrile-water (1:1v/v). The results showed that the MIPs can be used as a sorbent. Thus, direct extraction of certain pharmacophoric components from herbal plants is considerable by MIPs technology.