Electrostatic spray deposition of boronate affinity imprinted membrane to be used as adsorption separation material

In recent years, membrane separation technology has become more and more practical in the field of separation and purification due to its simple operation, low energy consumption, high efficiency and no phase change. In this work, shikimic acid molecularly imprinted polymers (SA-MIPs) were uniformly sprayed on the cellulose acetate membrane (CAM) substrate by electrostatic spray deposition (ESD) method for the first time to prepare the boronate affinity membrane (MIPs-PVA/CAM), which could specifically separate shikimic acid (SA). Thanks to the ESD process, the active binding sites were exposed on the surface, avoiding the encapsulation of MIPs in the membrane compared with traditional blending method, meanwhile, averting the contact with excessive polar solvents used in imprinted process to ensure the membrane integrity. In the adsorption test, the maximum adsorption of SA reached 51.57 mg g−1 in 70 min under pH 7.5, indicating the acceptable binding capacity and fast binding rate. Additionally, MIPs-PVA/CAM possesses remarkable binding selectivity towards SA due to boronate affinity and favorable reusability of 7.68% loss after five continuous cycles. According to the results, ESD holds great promise to prepare molecularly imprinted membrane platform with inherent tailored sites for separation of cis-diols compounds.