Metal assisted approach to develop molecularly imprinted mesoporous material exhibiting pockets for the fast uptake of diethyl phthalate as copper complex.

A new molecularly imprinted mesoporous material (MIM) containing specific pockets for the extraction of diethyl phthalate (DEP) as copper complex has been prepared for the first time. The mesoporous material was developed by utilizing copper-phthalate complex (Cu-DEP) as the template molecule, 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APS) as a functional monomer and tetraethoxyorthosilicate (TEOS) as the silica source for polymer network formation. The mesoporous material showed fast uptake kinetics, and equilibrium was obtained within 30 min due to the introduction of copper, which provides an additional site for interaction with the functional monomer. Synthesized polymer was well characterized using UV-Vis spectrophotometry, IR spectroscopy, TGA studies, and TEM. To achieve efficient extraction of the template molecule, various factors including sorption kinetics, quantity of MIM, time required for equilibrium set-up, sorption isotherm and reuse of MIM were optimized. The extracted DEP samples were analyzed quantitatively at 310 nm using an HPLC-DA system. The prepared material is robust and can be reused. In addition, it was found to be selective for DEP as compared to other phthalates.