The Present Status of Organic Elemental Microanalysis

The influence of instrumental analysis, i.e., physicochemical methods, has become increasingly important in organic chemistry, but organic elemental microanalysis is by no means an obsolete field. On the contrary, with the development of new methods, the organic chemist obtains the results that he needs for a first orientation on a compound, more quickly and more reliably than ever before. Today, there are two main directions of development. First, there are the so-called classical micromethods which are used on the milligram scale. Here the trends are towards (a) the automation or instrumentation of the 'old' methods, which is normally accompanied by a significant decrease in the total time required per analysis, and (b) the employment of new principles for the determination of the final products of combustion. Secondly, there is a strong tendency to develop methods in which samples weighing less than 1 mg are used for each analysis; here instrumental methods of completing the determinations are generally applied. The importance of the determination of functional groups to organic chemists has decreased considerably in recent years because more extensive and detailed information can be obtained from the physicochemical techniques.