Abstract
A facile and inexpensive approach was established to prepare spherical molecularly imprinted polymers with hypericin (H-MIPs) via the wet-phase inversion method. The H-MIPs were characterized by infrared spectroscopy and thermogravimetric analysis. High-performance liquid chromatography combined with UV–Visible spectroscopy were used to assess the efficiency of the extraction procedure and, furthermore, to investigate the recognition properties of the H-MIPs. Obtaining an imprinting factor of 3.38 for hypericin strongly indicated a successful formation of molecularly imprinted cavities onto the H-MIPs. A fair selectivity towards hypericin was tested in comparison to the interfering molecule pseudohypericin.
Keywords: molecular imprinting; wet-phase inversion; pearls; hypericin