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The absorbance of a material that has only one absorbing species also depends on the pathlength and the concentration of the species, according to the Beer–Lambert law =, where ε is the molar absorption coefficient of that material; c is the molar concentration of those species; ℓ is the path length.
The equation displayed on the chart gives a means for calculating the absorbance and therefore concentration of the unknown samples. In Graph 1, x is concentration and y is absorbance, so one must rearrange the equation to solve for x and enter the absorbance of the measured unknown. [25]
Molar concentration or molarity is most commonly expressed in units of moles of solute per litre of solution. [1] For use in broader applications, it is defined as amount of substance of solute per unit volume of solution, or per unit volume available to the species, represented by lowercase c {\displaystyle c} : [ 2 ]
where l is the optical path length, ε is a molar absorbance at unit path length and c is a concentration. More than one of the species may contribute to the absorbance. In principle absorbance may be measured at one wavelength only, but in present-day practice it is common to record complete spectra.
Absorbance is defined as "the logarithm of the ratio of incident to transmitted radiant power through a sample (excluding the effects on cell walls)". [1] Alternatively, for samples which scatter light, absorbance may be defined as "the negative logarithm of one minus absorptance, as measured on a uniform sample". [2]
The secondary benefit of using spectrophotometric analysis for nucleic acid quantitation is the ability to determine sample purity using the 260 nm:280 nm calculation. The ratio of the absorbance at 260 and 280 nm (A 260/280) is used to assess the purity of nucleic acids.
Any form of spectroscopy can be used in this way so long as the analyte species has substantial absorbance in the spectra. The standard solution is a reference guide to discover the molarity of unknown species. The matrix effect can negatively affect the efficiency of a calibration curve due to interactions between matrix and the analyte response.
When an isosbestic plot is constructed by the superposition of the absorption spectra of two species (whether by using molar absorptivity for the representation, or by using absorbance and keeping the same molar concentration for both species), the isosbestic point corresponds to a wavelength at which these spectra cross each other.