ASSESSMENT OF PEAK HOMOGENEITY IN LIQUID-CHROMATOGRAPHY USING MULTIVARIATE CHEMOMETRIC TECHNIQUES

The performance of three new chemometric techniques was evaluated syst ematically for assessment of peak homogeneity in liquid chromatography with photodiode-array detection. Multi-component analysis, window evo lving factor analysis and the HELP method performed equally well in th is study. Without making any assumption about peak shape or spectra, t hese methods were able to detect less than 1% of a spectrally similar impurity under a chromatographic peak, even if the chromatographic sep aration was low. The limitations of these techniques are also discusse d.