The production of pharmaceutical tablets is a multi-stage process that includes powder processing, milling, granulating, mixing and compacting. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of tablets are produced per hour in modern, high-throughput production facilities. Variations in the process parameters, however, can strongly influence the composition of the tablets and thus their quality. It is not only the total content of active ingredients and excipients that is important, but also their granularity and distribution within the tablet.
Pharmaceutical products naturally require maximum product uniformity to ensure consumer safety for each individual tablet. Therefore, an analytical method is required that captures all relevant quality parameters in a short time enabling complete characterisation of a tablet’s properties to optimise production processes and assure quality.
The application of (Fourier transform) infrared spectroscopy in pharmaceutical quality control is already well established. In this process, the unique spectral infrared absorption signature is used for unambiguous chemical identification.
