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Materials Systems for Removal of Steroidal Estrogen from Surface Waters
University of Kentucky Man's inputs of steroidal estrogen into the earth's surface waters is believed to be responsible for disruption of normal endocrine function of fish and other wildlife. We propose to develop a materials system for removal of this contaminant from surface waters. Our envisioned system is a molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) in the form of an extremely thin film with large surface area. The traditional MIP is a bulk polymeric matrix containing receptors that have both the specific geometry and complementary chemical functionality for trapping target, biologically active molecules. MIP is constructed by polymerizing the matrix around examples of the target molecule and then removing them to leave holes. However, the effectiveness of traditional MIP in capturing target molecules from a passing stream is crippled by poor accessibility of the interior receptors and also by the overlap of the timescales of the trapping and release processes.Our proposed system uses the MIP concept in the form of polymer chains permanently tethered to high-surface-area inorganic particles. The result would be very thin, uniform layers of polymer matrix imprinted with receptors for the target estrogen molecule. (The proposed co-investigators, L. Penn and M. Jay, possess the combined expertise.) The extreme thinness of the polymer layer will allow ready diffusion of the target molecules (steroidal estrogen) to the receptors where they will be trapped. The uniformity of the layer will result in a narrow distribution of diffusion distances, reducing the overlap between trapping and release timescales. The use of permanently tethered polymer chains to obtain uniform, thin layers, coupled with recent advances in MIP (i.e., in available monomers and crosslinkers) has high potential to lead to an effective and renewable scavenging system to remove contaminants such as steroidal estrogen from surface waters.
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