Thermal Analysis of Pharmaceuticals

Abstract

Thermal methods have been widely used and are well-established routine methods for pharmaceutical raw material and dosage form characterization. The conventional thermal methods all involve measuring a response from a material (usually in the form of energy/temperature or mass changes) as a result of applying heat to the sample. In this chapter the most widely used thermal analytical methods along with some more recently developed local thermal analysis and thermally based imaging methods are reviewed with regards to their working principle and applications in pharmaceutical product development. In the recent years, with the addition of the newly developed thermal imaging techniques, the capability of thermal analysis has broadened from conventional bulk sample analysis to also allowing more localized micron to sub-micron scale distribution and compositional analysis. The limitations of thermal methods for different applications are also discussed in relation to other characterization methods.