Characterisation of pharmaceutical materials produced by electrospraying

: Nystrom M, Murtomaa M, Salonen J

: 2011

: Journal of Physics: Conference Series

: PROCEEDINGS OF THE 13TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ELECTROSTATICS: ELECTROSTATICS 2011

: J PHYS CONF SER

: ARTN 012029

: 301

: 4

: *****************

: 1742-6588

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/301/1/012029

Electrospraying of solutions or suspensions provides a method for production of fine particles, in certain conditions even down to nanometer size. In the present study, electrospraying was used in drug particle production. The most important properties of the produced particles in a pharmaceutical sense are size distribution, degree of crystallinity and porosity. The size of the produced particles can easily be tailored by varying the concentration of the dissolved material, electric field strength or liquid flow rate. Most experiments on electrospraying are performed at atmospheric pressure. In the present study, the produced particles were dried under atmospheric or reduced pressure, the latter in order to improve the drying process. The effect of pressure reduction on the degree of crystallinity of the produced drug particles was studied by XRD and DSC. Also the porosity of the particles depends mainly on the drying conditions. The porosity and size of the produced particles was studied by SEM imaging.