A review of titanium dioxide and its highlighted application in molecular imprinting technology in environment

Over the past 40 years, Titanium dioxide (TiO2) has focused continuously growing worldwide concern due to its novel characteristics such as large specific surface area, powerful oxidation strength, and chemical stability. Nevertheless, its poor selectivity restricted its promising application in specific detection and selective removal of target pollutants in mixing solution, especially the low concentration of highly toxic pollutants. Importantly, concerning on the formation of selective sites with the memory of a template, molecular imprinting technologies (MIT) can selectively remove the template and their structural analogues. With the appealing characteristics of combination of TiO2 and MIT, the TiO2-based molecular imprinting polymers (MIPs) can selectively detect and photo-degrades targets, and are widely utilized in chemical sensors, solid-phase extraction and artificial antibodies. Thus, we review the significant progress of MIT and highlighted applications of TiO2-based MIPs during the past 10 years, especially emphasis on their origins, structure, functions, affecting factors, up-to-date development and main challenges faced in improving their working efficiency. Additionally, the review also covered the ecotoxicological effects of TiO2-based MIPs nanomaterials (NMs) in environment and human beings. (C) 2018 Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.