Sulfamethazine and sulfadimethoxine separation strategies based on molecularly imprinted adsorbents

The synthesis of molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) as a stationary phase of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), for the efficient determination of sulfamethazine and sulfadimethoxine in tablets is reported. The polymers were prepared by a noncovalent method with sulfamethazine as the template, methacrylic acid as the functional monomer and ethylene glycoldimethacrylate as the cross-linker in the presence of chloroform as the solvent. The retention time of sulfamethazine and sulfadimethoxine were approximately 5.2 +/- 0.2 and 10.3 +/- 0.5 min, respectively. In order to compare the chromatographic data from the stationary phase, retention factor (k) and separation factors (alpha) were given. The values of alpha were 2.05 similar to 2.17 showed that the MIP was able to recognize structurally subtle differences from the template molecule. The MIP was successfully applied to commercial tablet analysis and the result showed a good recovery with 99 and 98% for sulfamethazine and sulfadimethoxine.