Assay of tolnaftate and related impurities by isocratic supercritical fluid chromatography

Tolnaftate, an antifungal drug (TF) and related impurities arising from synthesis, viz., N-methyl-m-toluidine (NMmT) and beta-naphthol-1-chlorothio carbamate (beta-NCTC) can be determined by supercritical fluid chromatography. Even though it was possible to elute TF completely with neat SCF CO2, the peaks of the impurities were found to merge. The chromatographic figures of merit of the three analytes such as retention time (tR), capacity factor (k), selectivity factor (alpha), no. of theoretical plates (N), were optimized. The three compounds can be resolved in 5 min on a Hypersil (250 x 4.0 mm) 5 mu, C18 column with supercritical carbon dioxide, modified with 1.96% methanol as the mobile phase at 9.81 MPa and at 40 degrees C. Detection was carried out at 220 nm. The data as evaluated by the linear regression least squares fit method gave linearity ranges from 0.2 to 10.0 microg/mL for TF and NMmT and 0.3 to 10.0 microg/mL for beta-NCTC with correlation coefficients > 0.99. The method was successfully employed to estimate levels of 0.01% for NMmT and 0.02% for beta-NCTC with respect to TF.