Research progress and perspectives in field-induced imprinted polymers

In the process of preparation of imprinted polymers, the introduction of external fields, such as magnetic field, microwave field, ultrasonic field, electric field and high-energy radiation field, to improve the structure and performance of imprinted polymers has become a novel direction of the development of imprinted polymers, and relevant reports have been increasing in recent years. However, the progress of research on field-induced imprinted polymers has not been summarized and noticed, resulting in few perspective on the shortcomings and future development of the field-induced effect which in turn has hindered its further study. Considering this, we firstly introduced the development history and mechanism of imprinted polymers. Then, the field-induced effects on the mechanism of polymerization and the structure and performances of imprinted polymers were summarized in the order of magnetic field-induced imprinted polymers, microwave field-induced imprinted polymers, ultrasonic field-induced imprinted polymers, electric field-induced imprinted polymers and high-energy radiation field-induced polymers. Significantly, the challenges to the development of field-induced imprinted polymers were presented, and the development trends of field-induced imprinted polymers were proposed with the aim to build the bridge for future FI-IPs research and shed the light on the application research of the field-induced imprinted polymers.