Hey!
Thanks for sharing the results of your TLC tests.
A few tips:
1- Play around with concentration. Your sample being spotted seem way too concentrated, that makes measuring Rf not as accurate, and potentially hides impurities/minor spots in case they were there. Dilute them and try again (from having talked to you before I think you also use other analytical methods to make sure there arent other impurities but its good practice anyways to play with concentration of sample and see how they spot on TLC, generally too concentrated samples result in messy plates)
2- Try using larger plates so you can simultaneously run more than one sample in the same plate. That helps to compare substances if you have different samples being tested. You can also run the same sample in different lanes, to get a better view of the spots, you can play around with concentrations in each lane to be able to tell possible adulterants, and also because it makes it easier to compare reagents, which brings me to the next point:
3- It is ideal to drop different colorimetric reagents on the spots after running TLC plates, to get even more information about your spot, to help others who might have the same substance to be able to identify what they have. So say for example you run it 5 times and then use 5 different reagents, one in each spot, taking good pictures and posting online. This info can be shared, sort of like the database we built h
ere4- Also, what I noticed when playing around with TLC is that measuring Rf is not very useful by itself because different factors affect it (room temperature, saturation of eluent in developing chamber, etc), so it varies too much. It is more useful if you can run the sample of interest plus one unrelated "comparative standard". Say for example you run some easy to find substance like caffeine on a lane next to your sample of interest. Then you write down the Rf of both, and you get a comparative Rf (for example, 5-Chloro-DMT Rf is 0.8 times the Rf of Caffeine). This relational-Rf is way more accurate than the absolute Rf, and it helps other people who can have access to another substance but dont have a reference standard for their sample of interest, they can use the relational Rf to give a better idea if they have what they think they have. After many experiments with this idea, this is how I came up with the
TLC spot height calculator. Of course this relational Rf will be specific for each eluent.. which leads me to the next point:
5- Since TLC kits being sold commercially both by bunk police and protestkit.eu use as an eluent methanol:25%ammonia (97.5ml : 2.5ml to make 100ml eluent), I suggest you use this particular eluent because the information of your tests will be useful to a larger number of people.
Hope that helps!
Thanks again for sharing!