New detection techniques in high performance thin layer chromatography and related studies.

Recently, high performance thin layer chromatography, or HPTLC has seen considerable growth as an analytical technique. Most often perceived as a semi-quantitative or preliminary technique, in reality HPTLC is an analytical technique in its own right. Modern instrumentation, improved stationary phases, and automated techniques have found their way into the realm of HPTLC, vastly improving the scope of the technique. Today, HPTLC is a very popular analytical technique, possessing many advantages such as ease of use, high throughput, high sensitivity, and low cost. HPTLC is also applicable to a wide variety of compounds in a wide variety of matricies. Despite these advantages, HPTLC has still not received the recognition it deserves as a true quantitative analytical technique. The following chapters will describe improvements in various stages of the technique. Chapter 1 will discuss the general theory behind HPTLC, highlighting its advantages and disadvantages, as well as areas needing improvement. Chapter 2 will discuss a new application technique for HPTLC that greatly improves upon current methodologies for sample application. Chapters 3 and 4 will discuss a novel detection technique used to image the entire plate simultaneously and give excellent quantitative information of analytes on the HPTLC plate. Chapter 5 will discuss the use of an infrared focal plane array as a detection technique that gives both qualitative and quantitative information. Finally Chapter 6 will discuss the use of a CCD home video camera as an inexpensive alternative to scientifically operated CCD's