 Some commercial interest was also shown by the fact that Merck patented a nicotine filter, consisting of nicotine imprinted silica, able to adsorb 10.7% more nicotine than non-imprinted silica.The material was intended for use in cigarettes, cigars and pipes filters.Shortly after this work had appeared, molecular imprinting attracted wide interest from the scientific community as reflected in the 4000 original papers published in the field during for the period 1931–2009 (from Scifinder).