In this work, two different surface imprinting formats have been evaluated using thiabendazole (TBZ) as model template. The first format is a thin film of molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) grafted from preformed silica particles using an immobilized iniferter-type initiator (inif-MIP). The second format is molecularly imprinted polymer microspheres with narrow particle size distribution and core-shell morphology prepared by precipitation polymerization in a two-step procedure. For the latter format, polymer microspheres (the core particles) were obtained by precipitation polymerization of divinylbenzene-80 (DVB-80) in acetonitrile. Thereafter, the core particles were used as seed particles in the synthesis of MIP shells by copolymerization of DVB-80 and methacrylic acid in the presence of TBZ in a mixed solvent porogen (acetonitrile/toluene). The materials were characterized by elemental microanalysis, nitrogen sorption porosimetry and scanning (and transmission) electron microscopy. Thereafter, the imprinted materials were assessed as stationary phases in liquid chromatography. From this study it can be concluded that grafted MIP beads can be obtained in a simple and direct manner, consuming only a fraction of the reagents used typically to prepare imprinted particles from a monolithic imprinted polymer. Such materials can be used in the development of in-line molecularly imprinted solid-phase extraction methods. (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 48: 1058-1066, 2010