Abstract: In the present work, a novel two-dimensional (2D) nickel ion-imprinted polymer (RAFT-IIP) has been successfully synthesized based on graphene oxide/SiO2 composite by reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization. The imprinted materials obtained are characterized by fourier transmission infrared spectrometry (FT-IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The results show that the thermal stability of graphene oxide/SiO2 composite is obviously higher than that of graphene oxide. RAFT-IIP possesses an excellent 2D homogeneous imprinted polymer layer, which is well preserved unique structure of graphene oxide/SiO2. Owing to the intrinsic advantages of RAFT polymerization and 2D imprinted material, RAFT-IIP demonstrate a superior specific adsorption capacity (81.73 mg/g) and faster adsorption kinetics (30 min) for Ni(II) in comparison to the ion-imprinted polymer prepared by traditional radical polymerization and based on the common carbon material. Furthermore, the adsorption isotherm and selectivity towards Ni(II) onto RAFT-IIP and non-imprinted polymer (NIP) are investigated, indicating that RAFT-IIP has splendid recognizing ability and nearly three times larger adsorption capacity than that of NIP (30.94 mg/g). Moreover, a three-level Box-Behnken experimental design with three factors combining the response surface method is utilized to optimize the desorption process. The optimal conditions for the desorption of Ni(II) from RAFT-IIP are as follows: the eluent kind of HCl, the eluent concentration of 2.0 mol/L and the eluent volume of 10 mL