MIPs applications

The chapter concludes with a thorough analysis of selected examples of MIP applications published recently. 

A crucial factor in chromatographic MIP applications is the extensive peak broadening and tailing that results from the bulk effect in the polymer matrix. This is a critical limitation for MIPs in chromatography. Bulk effects are essential in sensory applications, where the sensitivity of sensor coatings depends on a one-step enrichment for an applicable selective incorporation. Instead, chromatographic columns have thousands of plates for an entire separation and hence the inclusion process can be weaker and less selective in comparison to sensor layers. 

The development of highly selective chemical sensors for complex matrixes of medical, environmental, and industrial interest has been the object of greate research efforts in the last years. Recently, the use of artificial materials - molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) - with high recognition properties has been proposed for designing biomimetic sensors, but only a few sensor applications of MIPs based on electrosynythesized conductive polymers (MIEPs) have been reported [1-3]. 

Possible applications of MIP membranes are in the field of sensor systems and separation technology. With respect to MIP membrane-based sensors, selective ligand binding to the membrane or selective permeation through the membrane can be used for the generation of a specific signal. Practical chiral separation by MIP membranes still faces reproducibility problems in the preparation methods, as well as mass transfer limitations inside the membrane. To overcome mass transfer limitations, MIP nanoparticles embedded in liquid membranes could be an alternative approach to develop chiral membrane separation by molecular imprinting [44]. 

This chapter also deals in particular with chromatographic detection by atomic plasma spectrometry and plasma mass spectrometry (AED, MIP, ICP). With the application of such detectors, metal-specific signals can be obtained - thus the information content of a separation increases significantly. The major objectives of interfaced chromatography-atomic plasma source emission spectrometry (C-APES) are ... 

HPLC-QFAAS is also problematical. Most development of atomic plasma emission in HPLC detection has been with the ICP and to some extent the DCP, in contrast with the dominance of the microwave-induced plasmas as element-selective GC detectors. An integrated GC-MIP system has been introduced commercially. Significant polymer/additive analysis applications are not abundant for GC and SFC hyphenations. Wider adoption of plasma spectral chromatographic detection for trace analysis and elemental speciation will depend on the introduction of standardised commercial instrumentation to permit interlaboratory comparison of data and the development of standard methods of analysis which can be widely used. 

GC-AAS has found late acceptance because of the relatively low sensitivity of the flame graphite furnaces have also been proposed as detectors. The quartz tube atomiser (QTA) [186], in particular the version heated with a hydrogen-oxygen flame (QF), is particularly effective [187] and is used nowadays almost exclusively for GC-AAS. The major problem associated with coupling of GC with AAS is the limited volume of measurement solution that can be injected on to the column (about 100 xL). Virtually no GC-AAS applications have been reported. As for GC-plasma source techniques for element-selective detection, GC-ICP-MS and GC-MIP-AES dominate for organometallic analysis and are complementary to PDA, FTIR and MS analysis for structural elucidation of unknowns. Only a few industrial laboratories are active in this field for the purpose of polymer/additive analysis. GC-AES is generally the most helpful for the identification of additives on the basis of elemental detection, but applications are limited mainly to tin compounds as PVC stabilisers. 

MSD provides molecular weight, fragmentation information and mass selectivity. Also, simultaneous GC-MS/MIP-AES has been described, using both a low-pressure and an atmospheric-pressure splitter [336]. The combination of MS and AED data sets provides the potential for application to a wide range of analytical problems, such as screening for the presence of hetero-atom-containing analytes (AED), identification and confirmation (MS) and quantification (MS, AED). On-line LVI-GC-AED/MS (dual detection) has been described with small (i.e. less than 0.5 s) differences in retention time of a compound with AED and MS detection [67], The dual-hyphenation set-up largely eliminates data-interpretation problems caused by small differences in retention time, or retention indices and is,... 

Applications Since the introduction of commercial GC-MIP-AES systems, organometallic analysis can be performed routinely, e.g. for speciation of organotin compounds used as PVC stabilisers [356], The hyphenated GC-AED technique can be used to improve the efficiency of additive analysis. While on the one hand... 

Applications Atomic emission spectrometry has been used for polymer/additive analysis in various forms, such as flame emission spectrometry (Section 8.3.2.1), spark source spectrometry (Section 8.3.2.2), GD-AES (Section 8.3.2.3), ICP-AES (Section 8.3.2.4), MIP-AES (Section 8.3.2.6) and LIBS. Only ICP-AES applications are significant. In hyphenated form, the use of element-specific detectors in GC-AED (Section 4.2) and PyGC-AED deserves mentioning. 

Applications A method for multi-element determination of major elements in commercial and in-house prepared polymer/additive formulations by MIP-AES after microwave digestion with nitric acid has been reported [212], The precision obtained varied between 2 and 4.5 %, depending on the element determined. 

With the exception of GC-MIP-AES there are no commercial instruments available for speciation analysis of organometallic species. Recently, a prototype automated speciation analyser (ASA) for practical applications was described [544,545], which consists of a P T system (or focused microwave-assisted extraction), multicapillary GC (MC-GC), MIP and plasma emission detection (PED). MCGC-MIP-PED provides short analysis times ([Pg.676]

Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) are of growing interest for their potential biotechnological applications. Recently, the templating processes with living yeast cells were reported107 for the preparation of ordered and... 

A recent review by Pichon and Haupt169 summarizes the progress in the area of utilization of MIPs for sample preparation purposes and cites several examples of solid phase extraction (MISPE) from biological matrices. The requirements and applications of MIPs are reviewed in a recent book170 and other literature.171-176... 

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