Determination of amoxicillin in pharmaceuticals using sequential injection analysis (SIA) - Evaluation of the presence of interferents using multivariate curve resolution

In this study, we report a method for determining amoxicillin in pharmaceuticals using sequential injection analysis (SIA) with a diode-array spectrophotometric detector. Before determining the amoxicillin, we use multivariate curve resolution with alternating least squares (MCR-ALS) to investigate whether any interferents are present. With a suitable analytical sequence, we can use SIA to generate a pH gradient and, for each sample, obtain a matrix of data that have been analysed by several chemometric techniques based on multivariate analysis: principal components analysis (PCA), simple-to-use interactive self-modeling mixture analysis (SIMPLISMA) and MCR-ALS. In this way we obtain the concentration profiles and spectra of the species in the sample. We studied six pharmaceuticals containing amoxicillin. Two of these pharmaceuticals contained no interferents, one contained an interferent but amoxicillin had a selective spectral area with respect to it, and the other three contained interferents. For the first three samples, we set up a system of univariate calibration, which determines amoxicillin quickly (it can analyse 20 samples/h) using inexpensive instrumentation and reactives. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.