06965 IUPAC Gold Book - lipophilicity 10.1351/goldbook.LT06965 LT06965 current 1 Lipophilicity represents the affinity of a molecule or a moiety for a lipophilic environment. It is commonly measured by its distribution behaviour in a biphasic system, either liquid-liquid (e.g., partition coefficient in 1-octanol/water) or solid-liquid (retention on reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) or thin-layer chromatography (TLC) system). chromatography https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/C01075 lipophilic https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/L03572 moiety https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/M03968 partition coefficient https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/P04437 thin-layer chromatography https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/T06346 PAC, 1972, 31, 577. 'Manual of Symbols and Terminology for Physicochemical Quantities and Units, Appendix II: Definitions, Terminology and Symbols in Colloid and Surface Chemistry' on page 607 (https://doi.org/10.1351/pac197231040577) PAC, 1994, 66, 1077. 'Glossary of terms used in physical organic chemistry (IUPAC Recommendations 1994)' on page 1123 (https://doi.org/10.1351/pac199466051077) PAC, 1997, 69, 1137. 'Glossary of terms used in computational drug design (IUPAC Recommendations 1997)' on page 1145 (https://doi.org/10.1351/pac199769051137) https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/LT06965/html https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/LT06965/json https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/LT06965/plain Citation: 'lipophilicity' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.LT06965 The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms. If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org . The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using. 2026-05-18T08:16:04+00:00