In situ synthesis and dynamic simulation of molecularly imprinted polymeric nanoparticles on a micro-reactor system

Journal article

Current practices in synthesizing molecularly imprinted polymers face challenges-lengthy process, low-productivity, the need for expensive and sophisticated equipment, and they cannot be controlled in situ synthesis. Herein, we present a micro-reactor for in situ and continuously synthesizing trillions of molecularly imprinted polymeric nanoparticles that contain molecular fingerprints of bovine serum albumin in a short period of time (5-30 min). Initially, we performed COMSOL simulation to analyze mixing efficiency with altering flow rates, and experimentally validated the platform for synthesizing nanoparticles with sizes ranging from 52-106 nm. Molecular interactions between monomers and protein were also examined by molecular docking and dynamics simulations. Afterwards, we benchmarked the micro-reactor parameters through dispersity and concentration of molecularly imprinted polymers using principal component analysis. Sensing assets of molecularly imprinted polymers were examined on a metamaterial sensor, resulting in 81% of precision with high selectivity (4.5 times), and three cycles of consecutive use. Overall, our micro-reactor stood out for its high productivity (48-288 times improvement in assay-time and 2 times improvement in reagent volume), enabling to produce 1.4-1.5 times more MIPs at one-single step, and continuous production compared to conventional strategy.

Authors: Erdem, Ö; Eş, I; Saylan, Y; Atabay, M; Gungen, MA

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Nature Research
• Journal: Nature Communications
• Volume: 14
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 4840-4840
• Article number: 4840
• Publication date: 2023-08-10
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-40413-8
• EISSN: 2041-1723
• ISSN: 2041-1723
• Language: English
• Keywords: Selectivity; Dispersity; Polymer chemistry; Catalysis; Chemical engineering; Nanoparticle; Chemistry; Organic chemistry; Molecularly imprinted polymer; Reagent; Molecular imprinting; Nanotechnology; Materials science; Polymer; In situ