LAUSR

Abstract Herein, it is reported an effective method to prepare novel molecularly imprinted polymers (MIP) on poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) elastomer via a combination of non-covalent imprinting approach and surface initiated reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer (SI-RAFT) polymerization for sensitive and selective detection of folic acid (FA). For this purpose, 2-(2-Methoxyethoxy) ethyl methacrylate (MEOMA), ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA), azobisisobutyronitrile (AIBN), FA and dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) were used as functional monomer, cross-linker, initiator, template molecule, and porogen, respectively. The adsorption behavior followed the Scatchard equation between FA and PDMS-MIP with a saturation adsorption capacity of 4.51 mg/g and pseudo-second-order kinetics with 60 min equilibrium adsorption time. Furthermore, PDMS-MIP elastomer was successfully applied for selective extraction and detection of FA from orange juice with sufficient recovery (95.5–100.5%) and relative standard deviation less than 7.0%. The limit of detection (LOD) for FA was found to be 0.0031 µg/mL with a linear range between 0.01 and 100 µg/mL and a correlation coefficient of 0.9997. Results showed the proposed method could easily, efficiently and selectively extracted FA from complex media. Note that this novel proposed method will open a new way to detect any selected molecules such as pesticide, protein, drug, etc. using molecularly imprinted PDMS elastomer materials.