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What is a limit of quantification?
The short answer
The limit of quantification is the smallest amount a method can measure with acceptable precision. Below it, a signal may be visible but the number attached to it is unreliable. It is why a certificate reports impurities as below the limit rather than as zero: the method did not find them, which is not the same as their absence.
In detail
The related figure is the limit of detection — the point at which something is visible but not measurable. Both belong on a method description, and both are why absolute claims are inappropriate in analytical reporting.
This is also why a purity figure has an implicit floor. Impurities under the method's limit are simply not part of the arithmetic, however the total is presented.
Our method page publishes these limits explicitly, so a reader can judge what the numbers can and cannot support.
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