Advanced Molecularly Imprinting Materials

In spite of the huge development in analytical instrumentation, sample preparation is still considered the bottleneck of the whole analytical process. Nowadays, several sample preparation techniques are available; however, all of them suffer from lack of selectivity making difficult in most cases the final determination of target analytes at the low concentration levels required. In this regard, molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) are considered excellent materials able to perform selective extractions. The incorporation of MIPs as sorbent in solid-phase extraction, so-called “molecularly imprinted solid-phase extraction” (MISPE), is already accepted in analytical laboratories, and some MIPs are commercially available. Besides, MIP incorporation to other sample preparation techniques, such as solidphase microextraction (SPME), stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE), or matrix solid-phase dispersion (MSPD), has been recently proposed and successfully applied to the extraction of different analytes from complex samples. Thus, the objective of this chapter is providing the reader an overview of the uses of MIPs in sample preparation including the most recent developments in this field.