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An imprinted electrospun fiber membrane was developed for the detection of volatile organic acids, which are key components of human body odor. In this study, hexanoic acid (HA) was selected as the target, polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) was used as the substrate, and colorimetric detection of HA was achieved by a bromocresol purple (BCP) chromogenic agent. The results showed that the morphology of the fiber membrane was uniform and continuous, and it showed excellent selectivity and specificity to HA. Photographs of the color changes before and after fiber membrane adsorption were recorded by a camera and quantified by ImageJ software by the difference in gray value (ΔGray). This method is simple, intuitive, and low cost and has great potential for application in human odor analysis.

Poly vinyl acetate grafted calcium alginate hydrogel microspheres were prepared with bovine serum albumin (BSA) as molecular template. The microspheres exhibited homogeneous and core-shell structure according to different preparation strategy. The rebinding and swelling property of microspheres showed responsiveness toward ionic strength, temperature, and pH. It was found the highest separation factor of 1.85 and imprinting efficiency of 1.75 when the Ca2+ ionic strength was 1.25 and 0.34 mol/kg, respectively. The separation factor was found decreased as temperature grew from 29 to 45°C while the imprinting efficiency reached a peak value at about 37°C. Separation factor of BSA imprinted microspheres at different pH was also recorded and two peaks were found, which were considered to be caused by the similar swollen state due to ionic and covalent crosslinking structure of modified microspheres. The recognition responsiveness is suggested to be influenced by environmental effects due to the changing in imprints' configuration at different swollen states. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci., 2013 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Molecularly imprinted latex membrane (MILM) is prepared by core-shell emulsion technique in the presence of a template molecule ( L-Tryptophan). A hard inward and soft outward microstructure latex particle is designed to obtain MILM with both flexibility and impact strength. Molecularly imprinted layer with high crosslinking degree is grafted on the surface of core-shell latex particles. NaCl, glucose, urea, polyethylene glycol, M w 300, etc., are added during the film-forming process to produce porous microstructure in MILM. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and Scatchard analysis are used to investigate the interaction between L-Tryptophan and MILM and the binding ability of the resultant MILM, respectively. The functional binding and separation performances in aqueous medium towards template are carried out. The results reveal that the content and type of porogen and the shell composition have significant effects on adsorption capacity and separation ability. MILM with glucose as porogen shows high recognition towards the template with adsorption separation factor reaching 9.06. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci., 2013 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]