ABSTRACT
Molecular recognition of enzymes, biological antibodies, and receptors can be achieved by collective weak forces between the guest molecule and host sites [1^4]. Because such bio-polymers can precisely recognize their counterparts to achieve the desired function, mimicking the recognition property by a chemical procedure is a great achievement for an arti¢cial system involving imprinted polymers.To design such a system, molecular imprinting has been an important strategy to try to mimic biological molecular recognition systems with synthetic polymers. AsmentionedinSec.III,imprinting techniqueshavefocusedondesigningrecognition sites with polymeric materials [5^11].These polymers are mainly prepared based on two important principles to imprint molecular shapes into polymeric matrix. First, a target molecule shape must be ¢xed by enveloping it with several functional monomers. Secondly, polymerization using radical and condensation reactions was carried out for solidi¢cation of the functional monomer=template complex in the matrix. This is commonly carried out via polymerization in the presence of a template-functional vinyl monomer complex with a cross-linker.The resultant solid polymer matrix gives rise to the known polymer e¡ect on imprinting. In these processes, monomer elements play an important role in the imprinting process since each element causes interactive binding to the target molecule before imprinting polymerization.
