Paper chromatography

Paper chromatography is an thin layer chromatography, however it is still a powerful teaching tool. Two-way paper chromatography, also called two-dimensional chromatography, involves using two solvents and rotating the paper 90° in between. This is useful for separating complex mixtures of similar compounds, for example, amino acids.

Analysis

After development, the spots corresponding to different compounds may be located by their color, iodine vapors. The final chromatogram can be compared with other known mixture chromatograms to identify sample mixes using the R_f value in an experiment.