Figure 11. Reusability of MTCFs@SIP@CBMA and MTCFs@NIP@CBMA (a), SEM (b), TEM images (c), and VSM curves (d) of MTCFs@SIP@CBMA after 8 cycles. Error bars represent ± standard deviations, n = 3.
Conclusion
Dedicated to the construction of high-performance imprinted materials, this work developed an anti-protein adsorption segment CBMA-assisted self-driven BSA surface imprinted magnetic tubular carbon nanofibers MTCFs@SIP@CBMA with high recognition selectivity using a strategy of combining magnetic nanomaterial surface imprinting technique with amine-Michael addition. The carrier is magnetic tubular carbon nanofibers (MTCFs) prepared by hypercrosslinking polymerization and vacuum high-temperature carbonization. The special structure of MTCFs including porous tube wall, the cavity in the tube and the iron nanoparticles loaded in the tube endows MTCFs@SIP@CBMA with magnetic performance and self-driven adsorption performance, which simplifies the separation process while improving the adsorption capacity and speeding up the adsorption rate. The adsorption kinetics study confirms that MTCFs@SIP@CBMA exhibits significant self-driven adsorption characteristics. The saturated adsorption capacity is 395.26 mg/g with an imprinting factor of 6.88. To improve the recognition selectivity of imprinted materials on the premise of ensuring high adsorption capacity, biofriendly dopamine is selected as a functional monomer for the coating of imprinted layer. At the same time, the imprinted surface is grafted with CBMA polymer chain by the method of amino-Michael addition to reduce non-specific adsorption. This method makes the length and position of the CBMA polymer chain controllable. When WBSA-MTCFs@SIP/WCBMA was 1:10, the length of CBMA polymer chain is the most suitable. Correspondingly, MTCFs@SIP@CBMA possesses the strongest anti-nonspecific adsorption effect, which in turn demonstrates the highest imprinting factor for BSA. Due to the contribution of anti-protein adsorption chain segments, MTCFs@SIP@CBMA presents excellent ability to specifically recognize BSA in both competitive adsorption and actual sample separation experiments. Furthermore, the adsorption capacity of MTCFs@SIP@CBMA lose only 4.76% after eight times of repeated adsorptions-desorption, indicating its excellent reusability. All in all, the high-performance protein imprinted material MTCFs@SIP@CBMA provides potential practical application value and is expected to play a role in the development of protein drugs and drug diagnosis.