Determination of Pharmaceuticals by UV-Visible Spectrophotometry

Pharmaceuticals are the chemical molecules which were invented to improve the life of living things through diagnosing, curing, treating, or preventing diseases. Pharmaceuticals can do their maximum function or work against disease or prevent from harmful effects of diseases only if they are free from impurities. The pharmaceutical analysis consists of different essential and important procedures to ascertain “identity, strength, quality and purity” of drug molecules. There are three different possibilities to originate impurities, which include (i) at the developmental stages of pharmaceuticals, (ii) at the time of transportation, and (iii) storage conditions. Therefore, the pharmaceuticals must be examined at all stages and the impurities should be discovered and quantified. The pharmaceutical analysis also admits that the analysis of intermediates and raw materials during the synthesis of drug molecules. Instrumentation is required to perform pharmaceutical analysis and methods can be developed to certain required levels. This review affords the basic theory of UV-Visible spectrophotometry and its applications, pharmaceutical method development and validation, and a list of some reported spectrophotometric methods, which are employed in pharmaceutical analysis from 2011 to 2020.