Molecularly imprinted membranes with different ratio of acrylamide (AM) versus methacrylic acid (MAA) were prepared by photocopolymerization on commercial filter paper using nicosulfuron as the template. The structures, the thermal stability, and the morphology of membranes were characterized by infrared spectroscopy (IR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), respectively. Static equilibrium binding and competitive recognition properties of the membranes to nicosulfuron and its analogs (pyrazosulfuron ethyl and bensulfuron methyl) were tested. The results showed that nicosulfuron-imprinted membranes had the best recognition capacity to nicosulfuron compared with its analogs. The biggest selectivity factors of ${\rm \alpha }_{{\rm N}_{\rm 1} /{\rm P}_{\rm 2} }$ and ${\rm \alpha }_{{\rm N}_{\rm 1} /{\rm B}_{\rm 3} }$ were 1.28 and 1.83 and the imprinted factor reached to 2.34. The results of this study implied that the molecularly imprinted composite membranes could be used as separation membranes for nicosulfuron enrichment. The Scatchard plot revealed that one class of binding sites was mainly produced in the imprinted composite membrane in the studied concentration range of nicosulfuron. (c) 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2012