LAUSR

Abstract The use of liquid crystalline (LC) media as sacrificial templates during the polymer synthesis has been explored. The LC-media introduce morphological features into resultant polymers which when used together with molecular imprinting can produce materials with hierarchical architectures. Bupivacaine (1) imprinted co-polymers of 2-hydroxyethylmethacrylate (HEMA) (2a) and 1,4-divinylbenzene (DVB) (3a) were synthesized using photochemical initiation in lyotrophic liquid crystalline phases of AOT (5) in water/p-xylene and Triton X-100 (6) /water systems. SEM studies revealed the impact of the LC-media on polymer morphology, with polymer brush-like structures, with bristles of ≈30 nm diameter. The polymer morphology reflects that of the hexagonal phase of the LC medium. The rebinding characteristics of polymer films were evaluated quartz crystal microbalance (QCM, under FIA conditions). The influence of the presence of imprinting-derived recognition sites in AOT (5) in water/p-xylene polymer film induced brush-like features which provided a 25-fold enhancement of sensor sensitivity. This chemosensor was shown to be selective for the local anesthetic template, bupivacaine, through studies using the structural analogues ropivacaine and mepivacaine.