Abstract: The recovery of lithium ion from mixed solution has attracted extensive research interesting with increasing the demand of lithium resources. In this work, novel cauliflower-like lithium-ion imprinted polymers (Li-IIPs) have been successfully synthesized by using B12C4 as complexing agent, acrylamide (AM) as the functional monomer and N, N'-methylene bis-acrylamide (MBAM) as the cross linker for selective separation and recovery of lithium ion from mixed solutions. The Li-IIPs exhibited maximum adsorption capacity for Li+ (1.135 mmol g-1) under optimum experimental conditions. Additionally, the high relative selectivity factors (KLi/Na=5.34, KLi/K=6.47, KLi/Cu=23.05, KLi/Zn=27.13) displayed Li-IIPs had outstanding selective performance. The regeneration experiments were also conducted and confirmed favorable reusability and stability of as-prepared polymers. Therefore, the outstanding performance and simple method make Li-IIPs become a powerful tool to effective separation and recovery of lithium ion in practical applications