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Thin Layer Chromatography Lab Report

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Thin-layer chromatography (TLC) is a chromatography technique used to separate the components of a mixture. It can be used to monitor the progress of a reaction, determine the purity of a substance, and identify compounds present in a given mixture. TLC is performed on a sheet of glass, plastic, or aluminum foil, which is coated with a thin layer of adsorbent material, usually silica gel, aluminum oxide, or cellulose. This layer of adsorbent is known as the stationary phase. After the sample has been applied on the plate, a solvent or solvent mixture is drawn up the plate via capillary action (known as the mobile phase). The presence of hydroxyl groups in the adsorbent renders the surface of silica gel highly polar. Thus, polar functionality …show more content…

Because different analytes ascend the TLC plate at different rates due to polarity, separation is achieved. Caffeine was found to be the most polar compound out of all the other analgesics with the lowest Rf factor of 0.33 due to its xanthine core which contains two fused rings, a pyrimidinedione and imidazole. Out of the four amine groups present in caffeine, the pyrimidinedione in turn contains two amide functional groups that exist predominately in a zwitterionic resonance, the location from which the nitrogen atoms are double bonded to their adjacent amide carbons atoms. The nitrogen atom is also capable of forming a hydrogen bond and participating in dipole-dipole interactions, along with its london-dispersion forces, thereby making it an extremely polar molecular compound and allowing it to form coordination bonds with silica gel in the TLC. The second most

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