Spectrophotometric determination of terfenadine in pharmaceutical preparations by charge-transfer reactions

A simple, rapid and accurate method for the spectrophotometric determination of terfenadine has been developed. The proposed method based on the charge-transfer reactions of terfenadine, as n-electron donor, with 7,7,8,8-tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ), tetracyanoethylene (TCNE), 2,3-dichloro-5,6-dicyano-1,4-benzoquinone (DDQ) or 2,5-dichloro-3,6-dihydroxy-1,4-benzoquinone (chloranilic acid, p-CLA) as π-acceptors to give highly colored complexes. The experimental conditions such as reagent concentration, reaction solvent and time have been carefully optimized to achieve the highest sensitivity. Beer's law is obeyed over the concentration ranges of 3–72, 3–96, 12–168 and 24–240 μg mL⁻¹ terfenadine using TCNQ, TCNE, DDQ and p-CLA, respectively, with correlation coefficients 0.9999, 0.9974, 0.9997 and 0.9979 and detection limits 0.3, 0.4, 2.6 and 12.3 μg mL⁻¹, for the reagents in the same order. DDQ and p-CLA react spontaneously with terfenadine to give colored complexes that can be applied for the flow injection analysis of terfenadine in the concentration ranges 2.4–120 and 24–240 μg with correlation coefficients 0.9990 and 0.9985 and detection limits 0.8 and 2.7 μg for DDQ and p-CLA, respectively, in addition to the high sampling through output of 40 sample h⁻¹.