Abstract: A coumarin molecularly imprinted composite membranes(MIM) with high binding capacity (0.1518 mmol/g) and satisfactory imprinting factor (2.09) was prepared in acetonitrile by thermal initiation with azobisisobutyronitrile (AIBN) using coumarin as template,polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membrane as supporting membrane,methacrylic acid (MAA) as functional monomer,ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EDMA) as crosslinker,and the molar ratio of template,monomer and crosslinker was 1:4:8.IR spectra and scanning electron microscope (SEM) were used to characterize the structure and surface of the obtained MIM,respectively.The mechanisms for transport together with the permeation selectivity were studied.The results indicated that the imprinted membrane,which demonstrated satisfactory recognition selectivity towards the template molecules in the presence of other compounds and the transport selectivity could be explained by the dissolution-proliferation mechanism,could be used for separation of coumarin from methanol extract of Cinnamomum cassia Presl with a recovery of 89.6%.