Application des liquides ioniques polymériques à empreinte moléculaire pour la résonance de plasmons de surface
Energetic material residues from military training munition are potentially harmful and need to be constantly surveyed in order to never exceed the environmental criterion. Yet, current methods are tedious and fail to provide real-time concentration of these contaminants. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) based sensors have gained high interest in the past decade due to their great sensitivity and the possibility of rapidly assessing samples. Molecularly imprinted polymeric ionic liquids are a promising new class of polymer that could bring a novel and adaptable approach for selective extraction of organics in water. They combine the ionic liquid’s extraction properties to molecularly imprinted polymer’s (MIP) tunable selectivity. The ionic liquid monomer is designed for optimal interaction with the energetic material, as its anion greatly affects he monomer’s solubility and interaction. Chemically, MIPs have the great advantage of being very versatile. In other words, changing the template is enough to modify the MIP’s selectivity. Hence, the potential of the method presented here is highly promising.   Various molecularly imprinted polymeric ionic liquids grafted on gold thin films have been tested via SPR for the quantification of energetic materials. The results show that the molecularly imprinted polymers film displayed good imprinting effect. Yet there still are issues concerning the reproducibility of the gold’s surface functionalization. The results in the following experiments suggested that a combination of SPR sensing with molecularly imprinted polymeric ionic liquids is a promising alternative method for subnanomolar detection of energetic materials in aqueous media.
Ionic liquids Molecularly imprinted polymer Surface plasmon resonance Contaminant detection