Chromatography Forum

I am preparing calibration curves and wondering whether peak area or peak height is the more reliable reading to plpot against concentration.
Reading literature there seem to be varied opinions on the reliability of Peak Area and Peak Height values when plotting calibration curves. I was interested to hear anyone's knowledge on this subject.

There is one argument that states peak area is more reliable when the separation is well resolved, and peak height is more reliable when there are overlapping peaks.

Thoughts?

As long as you have the data, try it both ways.

As a *very* rough generalization, area is likely to behave better at the upper end of the linear range or where there is alot of tailing; height is likely to behave better at the low end of the linear range or where there is a lot of noise.

The argument that height is better for partially-resolved peaks may only apply to manual measurement. Establishing the baseline algorithmically is tricky. I believe that some data systems actually determine height as the ratio of area to width (someone correct me if I'm wrong on that one!).

I agree with Tom here. Also one thing that Peak Area will help with is if you have peaks that are reproducible but not "pretty" as in not very Gaussian shaped. I have had peaks with flat tops, off center maxima and such that calibrate and reproduce very well when using Peak Area since most modern software can handle calculating area under a curve well even with oddly shaped peaks.