Enhancement in screening throughput and density of combinatorial libraries using wavelet analysis

We report an approach to increase the measurement rate in the real-time monitoring of parallel combinatorial reactions with a single scanning device. The wavelet transform is applied to collected data to reduce the integration time needed to achieve a predetermined signal-to-noise. As an example, we analyzed Raman spectra of diphenyl carbonate, one of the starting components in a melt-polymerization reaction of polycarbonate performed on combinatorial (150 muL volume) scale. The time reduction after the wavelet analysis of each measured spectrum permitted sampling of full spectra from each combinatorial reaction with an up-sampling factor N=20-90. Such up-sampling capability is critical for increasing the density of combinatorial libraries during their dynamic analysis where each library element is measured multiple times during combinatorial reactions. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.