ABSTRACT
Acknowledgments .........................................................................................................................180
References......................................................................................................................................180
In recent years, molecular imprinting technology [1-16] has achieved great success in the recog-
nition and detection of chemically and biologically important substances from inorganic [17-19]
and organic compounds [20-24], toxins [25-27], proteins [28-33], and viruses [28,34-35] to
microorganisms [36-39]. This technology offers a cheap, robust, and versatile platform, thus
proven to be the best alternative recognition elements for biological receptors in sensor construction.
Especiallywhen there is not a biological recognition component available for the targetmolecule, the
imprinted polymer is the only solution. Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) are prepared by
polymerization of functional monomers in the presence of a molecular template. The elution of the
template results in cavities that are complementary in size, shape, and chemical functionality with
the template. These complementary cavities allow rebinding of target molecules with a high
specificity, sometimes comparable to that of antibodies [40]. MIPs are currently attracting
growing attention in sensor development because of the successful utilization of both the enthalpic
and the entropic contributions of the binding process [15].
