Multi-way analysis of retention of model compounds in thin-layer chromatography

The thin-layer chromatographic (TLC) retention of 35 model compounds has been investigated with ten screening mobile phases on six normal-phase and seven reversed-phase adsorbents. The retention factors formed two cubes with dimensions 35 × 10 × 6 and 35 × 10 × 7, respectively, which enabled three-way analysis by PARAFAC. A one-component PARAFAC model was optimum in both cases and two-component models performed worse. The one-component model explained 78.8% of the variance in normal-phase chromatography and 94.2% of the variance in reversed-phase chromatography. These results showed that the major variability of the retention factor ( R F ) can be modelled as the product of three factors related to the substance itself, the mobile phase, and the adsorbent. R F modelling was substantially better than using k or R M (rate mobility) values.