Selective binding of an imprinted polymer resulted from controlling cobalt coordination to nitric oxide

In this article, the binding characteristics of the imprinted polymer P‐1[Co II (salen)] (salen: bis(2‐hydroxybenzaldehyde)ethylenediimine) to nitric oxide (NO) have been reported. P‐1[Co II (salen)] was characterized by Fourier transform infrared analysis, thermogravimetric analysis, and differential scanning calorimetry. Batch‐mode adsorption studies were carried out to investigate binding thermodynamics, kinetics, and selective recognition behavior of P‐1[Co II (salen)] to NO. The kinetics study indicates that binding of the polymer to NO fits the first‐order reaction kinetics with the rate constant k 1 of 0.087 min −1 . Langmuir and Freundlich equations were used to explain the equilibrium character of P‐1[Co II (salen)] binding to NO. The r 2 and χ 2 values suggest that total amount of NO bound by P‐1[Co II (salen)] can be best fitted by the Langmuir equation. The binding capacity ( B max ) of P‐1[Co II (salen)] was calculated to be 76.28 μmol/g, very close to the experimental value, 75 μmol/g. The thermodynamics and selectivity experiments showed that the affinity of P‐1[Co II (salen)] to NO was much higher than carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and oxygen (O 2 ), suggesting that P‐1[Co II (salen)] is a promising functional material for NO storage and NO sensing. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci., 2013