Quantitative 2D liquid-state NMR

Two‐dimensional (2D) liquid‐state NMR has a very high potential to simultaneously determine the absolute concentration of small molecules in complex mixtures, thanks to its capacity to separate overlapping resonances. However, it suffers from two main drawbacks that probably explain its relatively late development. First, the 2D NMR signal is strongly molecule‐dependent and site‐dependent; second, the long duration of 2D NMR experiments prevents its general use for high‐throughput quantitative applications and affects its quantitative performance. Fortunately, the last 10 years has witnessed an increasing number of contributions where quantitative approaches based on 2D NMR were developed and applied to solve real analytical issues. This review aims at presenting these recent efforts to reach a high trueness and precision in quantitative measurements by 2D NMR. After highlighting the interest of 2D NMR for quantitative analysis, the different strategies to determine the absolute concentrations from 2D NMR spectra are described and illustrated by recent applications. The last part of the manuscript concerns the recent development of fast quantitative 2D NMR approaches, aiming at reducing the experiment duration while preserving – or even increasing – the analytical performance. We hope that this comprehensive review will help readers to apprehend the current landscape of quantitative 2D NMR, as well as the perspectives that may arise from it. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. The recent efforts to precisely and accurately measure absolute concentrations in complex small molecule samples by 2D NMR are critically reviewed. Different strategies are presented and discussed, relying on original NMR developments combined with analytical chemistry procedures.