Application note describes and illustrates how infrared microspectroscopy aids rapid identification and morphological evaluation of solid pharmaceutical excipients
A solid dosage form of a pharmaceutical tablet or capsule often contains only a small amount of an active drug substance.
The rest of the formulation is comprised of inactive ingredients or 'excipients'.
Although the active drug substance achieves the therapeutic result by interacting with the targeted receptor in the body, the excipients are equally important because they influence the delivery of the active ingredient to the bloodstream.
Often excipients in solid dosage forms are crystalline and require a skilled microscopist to interpret the sometimes subtle differences of different crystals under polarised light microscopy.
The application note illustrates how the Illuminator microspectrometer system may be used to collect visual and spectroscopic information on different solid excipients within a formulation.
As an accessory to a standard infinity-corrected optical microscope the Illuminator provides a valuable molecular spectroscopic analysis capability.
The combination of the techniques is shown to provide visual image and IR spectral data for solid pharmaceutical excipients easily and rapidly.
Identification of the excipients is achieved automatically through the QualID software by comparing the collected spectra to a library of reference spectra.
The note illustrates how this information can then be combined with the morphological information in the digital images to fully characterise particles in blended pharmaceutical formulations.
