Determination of ampicillin and amoxycillin by flow injection chemiluminescence method based on their enhancing effects on the luminol-periodate reaction.

In this work, a new flow injection chemiluminescence method is described for the determination of ampicillin and amoxycillin. The method is based on the strong enhancing effects of these antibiotics on the luminol-periodate reaction. The present method allows the measurements of ampicillin in the range 0.02-1.0 mg/L range and amoxycillin in the range 0.1-10.0 mg/L range with the relative standard deviations within 0.8-2.0%. The sampling frequency was calculated about 90/h. The method was successfully applied to the determination of ampicillin and amoxycillin in pharmaceutical preparations. A brief discussion on the possible chemiluminescence reaction mechanism is presented. Copyright 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.