After successful completion of the course, students are able to assess the applicability, the information contents, and potential benefits or limitations of a particular (wet chemical or instrumental) analytical technique with regard to a given sample or analytical problem.
Fundamentals: Importance of analytical chemistry in technology and science; Areas of application, types of analytical problems. The analytical process and analytical figures of merit. Wet chemical analysis as underlying principle of many measurement methods: titrimetry and gravimetry; thermoanalytical and electrochemical methods with examples of use. Separation methods: Principles and important methods such as gas and liquid chromatography and electrophoresis. Spectroscopic methods: physico-chemical principles for absorption, emission and fluorescence and their application to the most important atomic spectrometric techniques (atomic absorption, atomic emission and x-ray fluorescence) and molecule-spectrometric techniques such as UV and IR absorption spectrometry and mass spectrometry. Sensors and on-line measurement techniques: Principles of chemical sensors and transducers (based on electrochemical, optical or physico-chemical techniques) and possibilities for their use in process and environmental analysis.
