Co-precipitation method to prepare molecularly imprinted fluorescent polymer nanoparticles for paracetamol sensing

Abstract In recent years, molecularly imprinted polymer have attracted intensive interests owing to its abundant tailor-made recognition sites, which show high affinity and specificity toward template molecules. Herein, we reported the synthesis of paracetamol (PCM) imprinted fluorescent polymer nanoparticles through a simple co-precipitation method using commercial starting materials, followed by acidifying and washing steps to remove the templates. The fluorescence intensity of the obtained PCM imprinted nanoparticles could be quantitatively quenched by re-binding with PCM. Its efficient sensing behavior on PCM was demonstrated with a linear working range from 10 μM to 100 μM and a detection limit of 1 μM. Moreover, its accurate assay on PCM content in commercial tablets proved it a promising and reliable chemosensor for PCM sensing. Furthermore, the reported preparation only consists of co-precipitation and washing steps under mild conditions, which is a simple, cost-, time-, and energy-saving tactic to develop various kinds of molecularly imprinted polymer nanoparticles.