POROGEN EFFECT TOWARDS THE QUALITY OF CURCUMIN IMPRINTED POLYMER

Emi Shaqiza Azizi (Cluster of Sensor Technology and Application, School of Material Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Perlis, no 17 Taman Pengkalan Asam, 01000 Kangar Perlis)
Mohd Noor Ahmad (Cluster of Sensor Technology and Application, School of Material Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Perlis, no 17 Taman Pengkalan Asam, 01000 Kangar Perlis)
A.K.M. Shafiqul Islam (School of Bioprocess Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Perlis Jejawi, 01000 Kangar Perlis)
Dahyar Arbain (School of Bioprocess Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Perlis Jejawi, 01000 Kangar Perlis)
Iqmal Tahir (Cluster of Sensor Technology and Application, School of Material Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Perlis, no 17 Taman Pengkalan Asam, 01000 Kangar Perlis)

Indonesian Journal of Chemistry
Vol 11, No 3 (2011)

Molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) is gaining importance in separation technology. In this study, curcumin has been selected as template in MIP which can be applied as sorbent materials in solid-phase extraction (SPE). Effect of porogen on the quality of curcumin-MIP is very sensitive depends on the molecular size and polarity of the porogen. We varied three solvents as the porogen i.e. tetrahydrofuran (THF), chloroform (CHCl3) and acetonitrile (MeCN). The MIP was prepared using non-covalent approach through bulk polymerization and non-imprinted polymer (NIP) as control, also prepared using the same procedure in the absence of template. The largest imprinting factor, 1.27 was obtained from polymer P1 at ratio 1:4 of template: functional monomer. The P1 was prepared using methacrylic acid (MAA) as functional monomer and tetrahydrofuran (THF) as porogen with the highest average pore diameter i.e. 618.43 nm trough gas adsorption analysis. This will lead to better access of curcumin during batch binding analysis.