Determination of some psychotropic phenothiazine drugs by charge-transfer complexation reaction with chloranilic acid.

A spectrophotometric method is described for the determination of four commonly used psychotropic phenothiazine drugs. The method is based on the measurement of the intensely coloured charge-transfer complex formed by the interaction of these drugs as n-electron donors with chloranilic acid as the pi-acceptor. The coloured species measured exhibits maximum absorption at 535 nm. The molar-combining ratio and optimum assay conditions are reported. Beer's law is obeyed over the range, 25-250 microg ml(-1) with apparent molar absorptivity in the range, 0.93 x 10(3)-1.45 x 10(3) l mol(-1) cm(-1). The limits of detection and quantification are reported. The proposed method was applied to the determination of these psychotropics in pharmaceutical formulations and the results demonstrated that the method is equally accurate, precise and reproducible as the official methods. The validity of method was established by recovery studies via standard-addition technique with satisfactory results.