Preparation of BSA surface imprinted manganese dioxide-loaded tubular carbon fibers with excellent specific rebinding to target protein.

Along with the wide development of protein imprinted polymers, the researchers still face many challenges, such as difficult template elution, slow adsorption rate and low adsorption capacity. In order to promote the progress of protein separation and purification, the surface imprinted manganese dioxide-loaded tubular carbon fibers (FTCFs@MnO@MIPs) are prepared in this work. FTCFs@MnO@MIPs are based on tubular carbon fibers (TCFs) coated with flaky MnO. Dopamine (DA) and bovine serum albumin (BSA) are utilized as functional monomers and templates. The MnO nanosheets are grown and loaded on the surface of carboxyl-modified tubular carbon fibers (CMTCFs) to form a MnO shell, which provides more imprinting sites for protein imprinting. Meanwhile, this shell enhances the interaction between the imprinting sites and BSA. The content of MnO loaded on the surface of CMTCFs is 9.42%. The obtained materials are systematically characterized and the adsorption performances of FTCFs@MnO@MIPs for BSA are investigated. The adsorption process of FTCFs@MnO@MIPs exhibits significant self-driven characteristics. The adsorption capacity reaches 816.44 mg/g in 60 min and the imprinting factor (IF) is 3.31. FTCFs@MnO@MIPs can selectively separate BSA from the mixed proteins and fetal bovine serum. Excellent reusability and practical application ability make MnO-loaded tubular carbon fibers (FTCFs@MnO) become a promising carrier in the field of protein imprinting.