The amount of amoxicillin in pharmaceutical formulations was determined using spectra of diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy (DRIFTS), in association with partial least squares (PLS) regression. The spectra of 24 different samples (17 for the calibration set and 7 for the validation set), which had been registered using a Nicolet Magna 550 spectrophotometer, contained 76.7-94.3% of amoxicillin in starch. The PLS models were constructed with auto-scaled or variance-scaled data, and multiplicative scatter correction (MSC). The best model presented R²=0.9936, RMSEC=0.441 and RMSEV=0.790. The analytical method proposed is non-destructive and the cost and time of analysis are very much reduced, allowing for the fast and direct determination of amoxicillin content.
Multivariate regression; Partial least squares regression; Diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy; Chemometrics
