*3.2. Instrumentation*

Chromatographic separation and analysis were carried out on a Shimadzu HPLC system coupled to a Diode Array Detector (DAD) (Kyoto, Japan), equipped with Rheodyne 7725i 20 μL loop (Cotati, CA, USA). The system consisted of a Shimadzu LC-10 ADVP pump and a Shimadzu FCV-10ALVP solvent mixer (Kyoto, Japan). The chromatographic separation was achieved using a Merck-Lichrospher RP8e, 5 μm 250 × 4 mm analytical column (Darmstadt, Germany). Degassing of the mobile phase was performed by helium DGU-10B degassing unit by Shimadzu (Kyoto, Japan) directly in the solvent reservoirs. The system was controlled by Shimadzu LabSolutions software (Shimadzu, Kyoto, Japan) which was also used for the data acquisition and analysis.

A glass vacuum filtration apparatus obtained from Alltech Associates (Deerfield, IL, USA), was employed for the filtration of the solvents using cellulose nitrate 0.2 μm membrane filters from Whatman (Maidstone, UK) prior to use. A Glasscol Vortexer (Terre Haute, IN, USA), an ultrasonic bath Transonic 460/H (Elma, Germany), a Reacti-Vap evaporator model from PIERCE (Rockford, IL, USA), and a Hermle centrifugation (Gosheim, Germany) were acquired for the sample preparation. Moreover, a 20–200 μL micropipette ISOLAB Laborgerate GmbH (Wertheim, Germany) was used for the preparation of the standard solutions.

XRD measurements were performed on a Philips PW1820 X-ray di ffractometer. The Fourier Transform Infrared Spectra (FTIR) were measured on a Nicolet 560 (Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., MA, USA) spectrometer.
