Critical investigation of coupled liquid chromatography–NMR spectroscopy in pharmaceutical impurity identification

In this paper, we investigate the application of coupled LC–NMR to the identification of low‐level impurities. We consider the absolute sensitivity of the technique with our instrumentation, and how this is degraded by peak broadening on and after column, and we compare the sensitivity and other aspects of LC–NMR with a more classical approach of impurity isolation and tube NMR. We show that despite the undoubted advantages of LC–NMR in many situations, for the identification of very low‐level impurities it may not always be the most efficient overall approach when all factors are considered.