Thin Layer Chromatography
Thin-layer chromatography (TLC) is a chromatographic technique that is useful for separating organic compounds. Because of the simplicity and rapidity of TLC, it is often used to monitor the progress of organic reactions and to check the purity of products. Method
Thin-layer chromatography consists of a stationary phase immobilized on a glass or plastic plate, and an organic solvent. The sample, either liquid or dissolved in a volatile solvent, is deposited as a spot on the stationary phase. The constituents of a sample can be identified by simultaneously running standards with the unknown. The bottom edge of the plate is placed in a solvent reservoir, and the solvent moves up the plate by capillary action. When the solvent front reaches the other edge of the stationary phase, the plate is removed from the solvent reservoir. The separated spots are visualized with ultraviolet light or by placing the plate in iodine vapor. The different components in the mixture move up the plate at different rates due to differences in their partioning behavior between the mobile liquid phase and the stationary phase

TLC can be automated using forced solvent flow, running the plate in an vacuum-capable chamber to dry the plate, and recording the finished chromatogram by absorption or fluorescence spectroscopy with a light source. The ability to program the solvent delivery makes it convenient to do multiple developments in which the solvent flows for a short period of time, the TLC plate is dried, and the process is repeated. This method refocuses the spots to acheive higher resolution than in a single run. See for example: Poole, C. F.; Poole, S. K. "Instrumental Thin-Layer Chromatography," Anal. Chem. 1994, 66, 27A.
Two-dimensional TLC uses the TLC method twice to separate spots that are unresolved by only one solvent. After running a sample in one solvent, the TLC plate is removed, dried, rotated 90o, and run in another solvent. Any of the spots from the first run that contain mixtures can now be separated. The finished chromatogram is a two-dimensional array of spots
http://www.chemicool.com/definition/thin_layer_chromatography_tlc.html

A pencil line is drawn near the bottom of the plate and a small drop of a solution of the dye mixture is placed on it. Any labelling on the plate to show the original position of the drop must also be in pencil. If any of this was done in ink, dyes from the ink would also move as the chromatogram developed.
When the spot of mixture is dry, the plate is stood in a shallow layer of solvent in a covered beaker. It is important that the solvent level is below the line with the spot on it.
The reason for covering the beaker is to make sure that the atmosphere in the beaker is saturated with solvent vapour. To help this, the beaker is often lined with some filter paper soaked in solvent. Saturating the atmosphere in the beaker with vapour stops the solvent from evaporating as it rises up the plate.
As the solvent slowly travels up the plate, the different components of the dye mixture travel at different rates and the mixture is separated into different coloured spots
The diagram shows the plate after the solvent has moved about half way up it
The solvent is allowed to rise until it almost reaches the top of the plate. That will give the maximum separation of the dye components for this particular combination of solvent and stationary phase
Measuring Rf values
If all you wanted to know is how many different dyes made up the mixture, you could just stop there. However, measurements are often taken from the plate in order to help identify the compounds present. These measurements are the distance travelled by the solvent, and the distance travelled by individual spots.
When the solvent front gets close to the top of the plate, the plate is removed from the beaker and the position of the solvent is marked with another line before it has a chance to evaporate.
These measurements are then taken

Using fluorescence
You may remember that I mentioned that the stationary phase on a thin layer plate often has a substance added to it which will fluoresce when exposed to UV light. That means that if you shine UV light on it, it will glow
That glow is masked at the position where the spots are on the final chromatogram - even if those spots are invisible to the eye. That means that if you shine UV light on the plate, it will all glow apart from where the spots are. The spots show up as darker patche

While the UV is still shining on the plate, you obviously have to mark the positions of the spots by drawing a pencil circle around them. As soon as you switch off the UV source, the spots will disappear again
Showing the spots up chemically
In some cases, it may be possible to make the spots visible by reacting them with something which produces a coloured product. A good example of this is in chromatograms produced from amino acid mixtures
The chromatogram is allowed to dry and is then sprayed with a solution of ninhydrin. Ninhydrin reacts with amino acids to give coloured compounds, mainly brown or purple

In another method, the chromatogram is again allowed to dry and then placed in an enclosed container (such as another beaker covered with a watch glass) along with a few iodine crystals.
The iodine vapour in the container may either react with the spots on the chromatogram, or simply stick more to the spots than to the rest of the plate. Either way, the substances you are interested in may show up as brownish spots.
Using thin layer chromatography to identify compounds
Suppose you had a mixture of amino acids and wanted to find out which particular amino acids the mixture contained. For simplicity we'll assume that you know the mixture can only possibly contain five of the common amino acids.
A small drop of the mixture is placed on the base line of the thin layer plate, and similar small spots of the known amino acids are placed alongside it. The plate is then stood in a suitable solvent and left to develop as before. In the diagram, the mixture is M, and the known amino acids are labelled 1 to 5.
The left-hand diagram shows the plate after the solvent front has almost reached the top. The spots are still invisible. The second diagram shows what it might look like after spraying with ninhydrin

There is no need to measure the Rf values because you can easily compare the spots in the mixture with those of the known amino acids - both from their positions and their colours.
In this example, the mixture contains the amino acids labelled as 1, 4 and 5.
And what if the mixture contained amino acids other than the ones we have used for comparison? There would be spots in the mixture which didn't match those from the known amino acids. You would have to re-run the experiment using other amino acids for comparison
http://www.chemguide.co.uk/analysis/chromatography/thinlayer.html








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