To the best of our knowledge, for the first time in this study, nano pore molecularly imprinted polymers were prepared using thymol as a template. A molecularly imprinting polymer with high performance for recognizing thymol was prepared by a novel surface molecular imprinting technique. First, silica nanoparticles were modified with -methacyloxypropyl trimethoxysilane (KH-570) as a support material. Afterward, surface molecularly imprinted polymers (SMIP) were obtained through polymerization with methacrylic acid as the functional monomer and trimethylolpropane trimethacrylate as the cross-linking agent. The produced polymers were characterized by transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller analysis as well as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The SMIP were obtained with the average core shell thickness of 17 nm, an average pore diameter of 3.9 nm, and the high specific surface area of 282.3 m(2) g(-1). The adsorption properties were revealed by batch binding experiments. The results indicated that the SMIP had higher binding capacity for thymol than its nonimprinted polymers. The selectivity of the SMIP obtained was clarified by using thymol and structurally related compounds. The selectivity coefficient of SMIP for thymol with respect to competition species obtained was 2.44, which revealed SMIP had good selectivity and site accessibility for thymol. A kinetic binding study showed that adsorption capacity of SMIP increased continuously with time and reached saturation adsorption at 90 min.