• Used widely in chemical and physical analysis of laboratory and has a wide variety of applications during the manufacturing process.

• A qualitative fingerprint check for the identity of raw material used in manufacture and for identifying drugs.

• Used in synthetic chemistry as a preliminary check for compound identity, particularly for the presence or absence of a carbonyl group, which is difficult to check by any other method.

• Can be used to characterize samples in the solid and semi-solid states such as creams and tablets.

• Used as a fingerprint test for films, coatings and packaging plastics.

• Can be used to detect polymorphs of drugs (polymorphs are different crystal forms of a molecule that have different physical properties such as solubility and melting point, which may be important in the manufacturing process and bioavailability).