Thin Layer Chromatography - TLC

TLC is a simple, quick, and inexpensive procedure that gives the chemist a quick answer as to how many components are in a mixture. TLC is also used to support the identity of a compound in a mixture when the Rf of a compound is compared with the Rf of a known compound (preferrably both run on the same TLC plate).
A TLC plate is a sheet of glass, metal, or plastic which is coated with a thin layer of a solid adsorbent (usually silica or alumina). A small amount of the mixture to be analyzed is spotted near the bottom of this plate. The TLC plate is then placed in a shallow pool of a solvent in a developing chamber so that only the very bottom of the plate is in the liquid. This liquid, or the eluent, is the mobile phase, and it slowly rises up the TLC plate by capillary action.
As the solvent moves past the spot that was applied, an equilibrium is established for each component of the mixture between the molecules of that component which are adsorbed on the solid and the molecules which are in solution. In principle, the components will differ in solubility and in the strength of their adsorption to the adsorbent and some components will be carried farther up the plate than others. When the solvent has reached the top of the plate, the plate is removed from the developing chamber, dried, and the separated components of the mixture are visualized. If the compounds are colored, visualization is straightforward. Usually the compounds are not colored, so a UV lamp is used to visualize the plates. (The plate itself contains a fluor which fluoresces everywhere except where an organic compound is on the plate.)
The procedure for TLC, explained in words in the above paragraphs, is illustrated with photographs as under:

Procedure for TLC

1. Prepare the developing container.
The developing container for TLC can be a specially designed chamber, a jar with a lid, or a beaker with a watch glass on the top:

In the teaching labs, we use a beaker with a watch glass on top.

2. Prepare the TLC plate.
TLC plates used in the organic chem teaching labs are purchased as 5 cm x 20 cm sheets. Each large sheet is cut horizontally into plates which are 5 cm tall by various widths; the more samples you plan to run on a plate, the wider it needs to be.

3. Spot the TLC plate
The sample to be analyzed is added to the plate in a process called "spotting".
If the sample is not already in solution, dissolve about 1 mg in a few drops of a volatile solvent such as hexanes, ethyl acetate, or methylene chloride. As a rule of thumb, a concentration of "1%" or "1 gram in 100 mL" usually works well for TLC analysis. If the sample is too concentrated, it will run as a smear or streak; if it is not concentrated enough, you will see nothing on the plate. The "rule of thumb" above is usually a good estimate, however, sometimes only a process trial and error (as in, do it over) will result in well-sized, easy to read spots.

The solution is applied to the TLC plate with a 1µL microcap.

Microcaps come in plastic vials inside red-and-white boxes. If you are opening a new vial, you will need to take off the silver cap, remove the white styrofoam plug, and put the silver cap back on. A small hole in the silver cap allows you to shake out one microcap at a time. Microcaps are very tiny; the arrow points to one, and it is hard to see in the photo.

Take a microcap and dip it into the solution of the sample to be spotted. Then, touch the end of the microcap gently to the adsorbent on the origin in the place which you have marked for the sample. Let all of the contents of the microcap run onto the plate. Be careful not to disturb the coating of adsorbent.

4. Develop the plate.
Place the prepared TLC plate in the developing beaker, cover the beaker with the watch glass, and leave it undisturbed on your bench top. Run until the solvent is about half a centimeter below the top of the plate (see photos below).

5. Visualize the spots
If your samples are colored, mark them before they fade by circling them lightly with a pencil (see photo above).
Most samples are not colored and need to be visualized with a UV lamp. Hold a UV lamp over the plate and mark any spots which you see lightly with a pencil.
Beware! UV light is damaging both to your eyes and to your skin! Make sure you are wearing your goggles and do not look directly into the lamp. Protect your skin by wearing gloves.
If the TLC plate runs samples which are too concentrated, the spots will be streaked and/or run together. If this happens, you will have to start over with a more dilute sample to spot and run on a TLC plate.

TLC Adsorbent

In the teaching labs at CU Boulder, we use silica gel plates (SiO2) almost exclusively. (Alumina (Al2O3) can also be used as a TLC adsorbent.) The plates are aluminum-backed and you can cut them to size with scissors. Our plates are purchased ready-made from EM Sciences or from Scientific Adsorbents. The adsorbent is impregnated with a fluor, zinc sulfide. The fluor enables most organic compounds to be visualized when the plate is held under a UV lamp. In some circumstances, other visualization methods are used, such as charring or staining.

TLC Solvents or Solvent Systems

Choosing a solvent is covered on the Chromatography Overview page. The charts at the bottom of that page are particularly useful.

Interactions of the Compound and the Adsorbent

The strength with which an organic compound binds to an adsorbent depends on the strength of the following types of interactions: ion-dipole, dipole-dipole, hydrogen bonding, dipole induced dipole, and van der Waals forces. With silica gel, the dominant interactive forces between the adsorbent and the materials to be separated are of the dipole-dipole type. Highly polar molecules interact fairly strongly with the polar Si—O bonds of these adsorbents and will tend to stick or adsorb onto the fine particles of the adsorbent while weakly polar molecules are held less tightly. Weakly polar molecules thus generally tend to move through the adsorbent more rapidly than the polar species. Roughly, the compounds follow the elution order given on the Chromatography Overview page.

The Rf value

Rf is the retention factor, or how far up a plate the compound travels. See the Rf page for more details:

TLC - Retention Factor (Rf)

The retention factor, or Rf, is defined as the distance traveled by the compound divided by the distance traveled by the solvent.

For example, if a compound travels 2.1 cm and the solvent front travels 2.8 cm, the Rf is 0.75:

The Rf for a compound is a constant from one experiment to the next only if the chromatography conditions below are also constant:

Since these factors are difficult to keep constant from experiment to experiment, relative Rf values are generally considered. “Relative Rf” means that the values are reported relative to a standard, or it means that you compare the Rf values of compounds run on the same plate at the same time.
The larger an Rf of a compound, the larger the distance it travels on the TLC plate. When comparing two different compounds run under identical chromatography conditions, the compound with the larger Rf is less polar because it interacts less strongly with the polar adsorbent on the TLC plate. Conversely, if you know the structures of the compounds in a mixture, you can predict that a compound of low polarity will have a larger Rf value than a polar compound run on the same plate.
The Rf can provide corroborative evidence as to the identity of a compound. If the identity of a compound is suspected but not yet proven, an authentic sample of the compound, or standard, is spotted and run on a TLC plate side by side (or on top of each other) with the compound in question. If two substances have the same Rf value, they are likely (but not necessarily) the same compound. If they have different Rf values, they are definitely different compounds. Note that this identity check must be performed on a single plate, because it is difficult to duplicate all the factors which influence Rf exactly from experiment to experiment.

Visualizing the Spots

If the compounds are colored, they are easy to see with the naked eye. If not, a UV lamp is used.

Troubleshooting TLC

All of the above (including the procedure page) might sound like TLC is quite an easy procedure. But what about the first time you run a TLC, and see spots everywhere and blurred, streaked spots? As with any technique, with practice you get better. One thing you have to be careful Examples of common problems encountered in TLC:

The sample was overloaded. Run the TLC again after diluting your sample. Or, your sample might just contain many components, creating many spots which run together and appear as a streak. Perhaps, the experiment did not go as well as expected.

Compounds which possess strongly acidic or basic groups (amines or carboxylic acids) sometimes show up on a TLC plate with this behavior. Add a few drops of ammonium hydroxide (amines) or acetic acid (carboxylic acids) to the eluting solvent to obtain clearer plates.

Likely, the adsorbent was disturbed during the spotting, causing the crescent shape.

Either the adsorbent has flaked off the sides of the plate or the sides of the plate are touching the sides of the container (or the paper used to saturate the container) as the plate develops. Crookedly run plates make it harder to measure Rf values accurately.

Make sure that you do not accidentally drop any organic compound on the plate. If get a TLC plate and leave it laying on your workbench as you do the experiment, you might drop or splash an organic compound on the plate.

You might not have spotted enough compound, perhaps because the solution of the compound is too dilute. Try concentrating the solution, or, spot it several times in one place, allowing the solvent to dry between applications. Some compounds do not show up under UV light; try another method of visualizing the plate. Or, perhaps you do not have any compound because your experiment did not go as well as planned.
If the solvent level in the developing jar is deeper than the origin (spotting line) of the TLC plate, the solvent will dissolve the compounds into the solvent reservoir instead of allowing them to move up the plate by capillary action. Thus, you will not see spots after the plate is developed.

Perhaps, you used an ink pen instead of a pencil to mark the origin?