Recent developments in derivative ultraviolet/visible absorption spectrophotometry

Derivative spectrophotometry is an analytical technique of great utility for extracting both qualitative and quantitative information from spectra composed of unresolved bands, and for eliminating the effect of baseline shifts and baseline tilts. It consists of calculating and plotting one of the mathematical derivatives of a spectral curve. Thus, the information content of a spectrum is presented in a potentially more useful form, offering a convenient solution to a number of analytical problems, such as resolution of multi-component systems, removal of sample turbidity, matrix background and enhancement of spectral details. Derivative spectrophotometry is now a reasonably priced standard feature of modern micro-computerized UV/Vis spectrophotometry. The instrumental development and analytical applications of derivative UV/Vis regions absorption spectrophotometry produced in the last 10 years (since 1994) are reviewed.