Continuous Processes and Flow Chemistry at the Universities of Applied Sciences in Switzerland.

This article provides an overview of activities in the fields of continuous processes, flow chemistry and microreactors at the Universities of Applied Sciences in Switzerland.

Thin-layer chromatography-nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy - a versatile tool for pharmaceutical and natural products analysisa.

Thin-layer chromatography (TLC) is a mature and very established technique, frequently used in many fields of applications ranging from natural product analysis to chemical or pharmaceutical applications. The introduction of a commercially available TLC-MS interface was a major step complementing the ease of use of TLC with structural elucidation power of mass spectrometry (MS). The TLC-MS interface simplifies the workflow dramatically to gain structural information directly from TLC separations. This article describes the potential of TLC-nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) utilizing the TLC-MS interface to straightforwardly characterize zones of interest by NMR spectroscopy with a focus on quantification of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) in formulations and identification of active principles in plant extracts.