MOLECULAR IMPRINTING FOR HIGH-ADDED VALUE METALS

One of the most hot topics of recent research is the reuse of some compounds existing as pollutants in environment. These compounds (molecules, ions, complexes, etc.) are of high-added value and it will be ideal to selectively bind them with any environmental application and reuse them in their initial or modified form. The latter can be achieved using molecular imprinting. In the present review article, an overview of the recent attempts for the selective binding of some precious metals (i.e., gold, silver, and platinum) of high-added value is done using molecular imprinted polymers (MIPs) as materials. The simplicity of their use, their relatively low cost, and the broad range of possible guest molecules (small organic molecules, ions, metals, and also biological macromolecules) have since led to the important development of molecular imprinting.

One of the most hot topics of recent research is the reuse of some compounds existing as pollutants in environment. These compounds (molecules, ions, complexes, etc.) are of high-added value and it will be ideal to selectively bind them with any environmental application and reuse them in their initial or modified form. The latter can be achieved using molecular recognition. The ability to selectively recognize a target molecule in a vast pool of similar molecules is essential to biological and chemical processes. This process is called molecular recognition and it is an event that occurs everywhere in nature. It occurs when two molecules are both geometrically and chemically complementary, that is, when they can both “fit together” spatially and bind with each other using noncovalent forces, including hydrogen bonds, electrostatic interactions, hydrophobic interactions, and weak metal coordination [1]. Therefore, a specific technology has been bloomed and redesigned in the last 30 years, which is called molecular imprinting (MI). The whole process is based on adsorption technology, which is already one of the most successful techniques for pollutants removal