Characterisation of indomethacin and nifedipine using variable-temperature solid-state NMR

We have characterised the stable polymorphic forms of two drug molecules, indomethacin (1) and nifedipine (2) by 13C CPMAS NMR and the resonances have been assigned. The signal for the C-Cl carbon of indomethacin has been studied as a function of applied magnetic field, and the observed bandshapes have been simulated. Variable-temperature 1H relaxation measurements of static samples have revealed a T1rho minimum for indomethacin at 17.8 degrees C. The associated activation energy is 38 kJ mol(-1). The relevant motion is probably an internal rotation and it is suggested that this involves the C-OCH3 group. Since the two drug compounds are potential candidates for formulation in the amorphous state, we have examined quench-cooled melts in detail by variable-temperature 13C and 1H NMR. There is a change in slope for T1H and T1rhoH at the glass transition temperature (Tg) for indomethacin, but this occurs a few degrees below Tg for nifedipine, which is perhaps relevant to the lower real-time stability of the amorphous form for the latter compound. Comparison of relaxation time data for the crystalline and amorphous forms of each compound reveals a greater difference for nifedipine than for indomethacin, which again probably relates to real-time stabilities. Recrystallisation of the two drugs has been followed by proton bandshape measurements at higher temperatures. It is shown that, under the conditions of the experiments, recrystallisation of nifedipine can be detected already at 70 degrees C, whereas this does not occur until 110 degrees C for indomethacin. The effect of crushing the amorphous samples has been studied by 13C NMR; nifedipine recrystallises but indomethacin does not. The results were supported by DSC, powder XRD, FTIR and solution-state NMR measurements.     

不同结晶度的乙二醇及其水溶液玻璃化转变与焓松弛

为了考察晶体成分对无定形成分玻璃化转变和结构松弛行为的影响,利用差示扫描量热法(DSC),结合低温显微技术,研究了乙二醇(EG)及其50％水溶液在不同结晶度时的玻璃化转变和焓松弛行为.采用等温结晶方法控制骤冷的部分结晶玻璃体中的晶体份额.DSC结果表明,对于部分结晶的EG,只有单一的玻璃化转变过程,而对于50％EG,当结晶度不同时,不同程度地表现出两次玻璃化转变（无定形相Ⅰ和无定形相Ⅱ）.相Ⅰ的玻璃化转变温度和完全无定形态的含水EG的玻璃化转变温度相一致;相Ⅱ的玻璃化转变温度要比此温度约高6 ℃.低温显微观察结果印证了DSC实验结果.DSC等温退火的实验和KWW(Kohlrausch-Williams-Watts)衰变函数分析结果表明,EG无定形和50％EG中的两种无定形有不同的焓松弛行为.     

Glassy state of pharmaceuticals. IV. Studies on glassy pharmaceuticals by thermomechanical analysis

The glassy state of indomethacin was examined by thermomechanical analysis (TMA). The influences of the method of preparation and the measurement conditions of the sample on the TMA curves were investigated. The TMA curves of glassy indomethacin having hemispherical and plane surfaces were examined. Expansion was observed on the TMA curves in the region of glass transition temperature (Tg), which had been confirmed by differential scanning calorimetry. The TMA curves for the sample with the plane surface showed distinct expansion. It was further found that the glass transition shifted to lower temperatures as the heating rate was decreased and the loading increased. The TMA curves of brucine, griseofulvin and phenobarbital were similar to that of indomethacin. The relaxation process of glassy indomethacin below Tg was followed in terms of the variation of mechanical properties of samples.     

Encapsulation of Indomethacin in PVP: Solid-State NMR Studies

Summary: ¹³C solid-state NMR and ¹H relaxation time measurements have been used to determine the structure of the crystalline and amorphous forms of the pharmaceutical drug indomethacin. Cross-polarization dynamics parameters were calculated for individual NMR resonances providing an insight into the mobility of functional groups in two forms of indomethacin. The changes of mobility in indomethacin/polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) formulation have been investigated via¹H-¹³C solid-state NMR methods. Differences between the amorphous material and its crystalline counterpart have been observed. The γ-amorphous indomethacin rapidly crystallizes with time. It has been shown that encapsulation in the PVP stabilizes the amorphous form of the drug by preventing crystallization due to reduced mobility of the guest in the formulation.     

Hiking down the energy landscape: progress toward the Kauzmann temperature via vapor deposition

Physical vapor deposition was employed to prepare amorphous samples of indomethacin and 1,3,5-(tris)naphthylbenzene. By depositing onto substrates held somewhat below the glass transition temperature and varying the deposition rate from 15 to 0.2 nm/s, glasses with low enthalpies and exceptional kinetic stability were prepared. Glasses with fictive temperatures that are as much as 40 K lower than those prepared by cooling the liquid can be made by vapor deposition. As compared to an ordinary glass, the most stable vapor-deposited samples moved about 40% toward the bottom of the potential energy landscape for amorphous materials. These results support the hypothesis that enhanced surface mobility allows stable glass formation by vapor deposition. A comparison of the enthalpy content of vapor-deposited glasses with aged glasses was used to evaluate the difference between bulk and surface dynamics for indomethacin; the dynamics in the top few nanometers of the glass are about 7 orders of magnitude faster than those in the bulk at Tg - 20 K.     

Physical stability and relaxation of amorphous indomethacin

The alpha- and beta-relaxation processes in amorphous indomethacin have been studied by using differential scanning calorimetry. The beta-process has been detected as a small endothermic peak that emerges before the glass transition step when reheating samples previously annealed in the temperature region -20 to +5 degrees C. The activation energy of the beta-process is approximately 57 kJ mol(-1), and shows an increase with increasing temperature as it approaches the glass transition region. In the glass transition region, the effective activation energy of relaxation decreases with increasing temperature from 320 to 160 kJ mol(-1). Heat capacity measurements have allowed for the evaluation of the cooperatively rearranging region in terms of the linear size (3.4 nm) and the number of molecules (90). The beta-relaxation fades below -30 degrees C, which provides a practical estimate for the lower temperature limit of physical instability in indomethacin. It is demonstrated experimentally that nucleation of indomethacin takes place in the temperature region of the beta-relaxation.     

Photoinduced intramolecular charge separation in a polymer solid below the glass transition temperature

Photoinduced intramolecular charge separation (CS) in a polar polymer glass, cyanoethylated pullulan (CN-PUL), was studied below the glass transition temperature (Tg=395 K). A series of three carbazole (Cz: donor)-cyclohexane (S: spacer)-acceptor (A: acceptor) molecules (Cz-S-A) was used as intramolecular donor-acceptor dyads. The photoinduced CS rate was evaluated by the fluorescence decay measurement at temperatures from 100 to 400 K. The CS rate (kCS) increased above 200 K even far below Tg where micro-Brownian motions of the whole polymer chain are frozen. Below 200 K, on the other hand, kCS showed weak dependence on temperature. The temperature dependence of kCS is discussed in terms of the dielectric relaxation time of the polymer matrix. Consequently, CS below Tg was well explained by a thermally nonequilibrium electron transfer (ET) formula above 200 K and by a two-mode quantum-mechanical ET formula below 200 K. The increase in kCS above 200 K is mainly caused by a thermally activated low-frequency matrix mode originating from the side-chain relaxation of polar cyano groups. The weak temperature dependence of kCS can be explained by a nuclear-tunneling effect caused by a high-frequency matrix mode (variant Planck's over 2piomegH=250 cm-1) and an intramolecular vibrational mode (variant Planck's over 2piomegaQ=1300 cm-1). The high-frequency mode of the polymer matrix was attributed to a vibrational or librational motion of polar groups in the CN-PUL glassy solid.     

Effect of physical aging on the Johari-Goldstein and alpha relaxations of D-sorbitol: a study by thermally stimulated depolarization currents

The relaxations in amorphous D-sorbitol have been studied by thermally stimulated depolarization currents during annealing at 255 K, which is 17 K below its calorimetric glass transition temperature Tg=272 K. As the glass structurally relaxes on aging, the features of the alpha relaxation and of the Johari-Goldstein (JG) relaxation change with time. For the alpha relaxation (i) the dielectric strength decreases; (ii) the activation energy decreases; and (iii) the relaxation time increases. For the JG relaxation the dielectric strength also decreases but with a different time dependence, and there is no evidence for any modification of the kinetic features of the mobility. The amplitude of response to aging is higher for the higher temperature motional components of the Johari-Goldstein relaxation compared with the lower temperature ones.     

Relaxation dynamics in tert-butylpyridine/tristyrene mixture investigated by broadband dielectric spectroscopy

We investigated, by means of dielectric spectroscopy, the relaxation dynamics of glass forming binary mixtures composed by the quite rigid polar molecules tert-butylpyridine dissolved in the apolar solvent tristyrene. By changing the relative concentration of the components we observed a transition from a relaxation scenario with a structural process and an excess wing to that with a structural process and a well resolved secondary process. Another relaxation process, slower than the latter, was observed, well below Tg. Our detailed analysis evidenced that the secondary relaxation with shorter relaxation time can be identified as the Johari-Goldstein relaxation for all the mixtures, whereas the new relaxation process was attributed to a different type of motion of tert-butylpyridine needing a larger amount of free volume for the molecular rotation.     

Indomethacin: The Interplay between Structural Relaxation,Viscous Flow and Crystal Growth

Non-isothermal differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was used to study the influences of particle size (d_aver) and heating rate (q⁺) on the structural relaxation, crystal growth and decomposition kinetics of amorphous indomethacin. The structural relaxation and decomposition processes exhibited d_aver-independent kinetics, with the q⁺ dependences based on the apparent activation energies of 342 and 106 kJ·mol⁻¹, respectively. The DSC-measured crystal growth kinetics played a dominant role in the nucleation throughout the total macroscopic amorphous-to-crystalline transformation: the change from the zero-order to the autocatalytic mechanism with increasing q⁺, the significant alteration of kinetics, with the storage below the glass transition temperature, and the accelerated crystallization due to mechanically induced defects. Whereas slow q⁺ led to the formation of the thermodynamically stable γ polymorph, fast q⁺ produced a significant amount of the metastable α polymorph. Mutual correlations between the macroscopic and microscopic crystal growth processes, and between the viscous flow and structural relaxation motions, were discussed based on the values of the corresponding activation energies. Notably, this approach helped us to distinguish between particular crystal growth modes in the case of the powdered indomethacin materials. Ediger’s decoupling parameter was used to quantify the relationship between the viscosity and crystal growth. The link between the cooperativity of structural domains, parameters of the Tool-Narayanaswamy-Moynihan relaxation model and microscopic crystal growth was proposed.     

The Johari-Goldstein beta-relaxation of water

There is a plethora of experimental data on the dynamics of water in mixtures with glycerol, ethylene glycol, ethylene glycol oligomers, poly(ethylene glycol) 400 and 600, propanol, poly(vinyl pyrrolidone), poly(vinyl methylether), and other substances. In spite of the differences in the water contents, the chemical compositions, and the glass transition temperatures Tg of these aqueous mixtures, a faster relaxation originating from the water (called the nu-process) is omnipresent, sharing the following common properties. The relaxation time tau(nu) has Arrhenius temperature dependence at temperatures below Tg of the mixture. The activation energies of tau(nu) all fall within a neighborhood of 50 kJ/mol. At the same temperature where mixtures are all in their glassy states, the values of tau(nu) of several mixtures are comparable. The Arrhenius temperature dependence of tau(nu) does not continue to higher temperatures and instead it crosses over to a stronger temperature dependence at temperatures above Tg. The dielectric relaxation strength of the nu-process, Deltaepsilon(nu)(T), has a stronger temperature dependence above Tg than below, mimicking the change of enthalpy, entropy, and volume when crossing Tg. These general property of the nu-process (except for the magnitude of the activation energy) had been found before in the secondary relaxation of the faster component in several binary nonaqueous mixtures. Other properties of the secondary relaxation in these nonaqueous mixtures have helped to identify it as the Johari-Goldstein (JG) secondary relaxation of the faster component. The similarities in properties lead us to conclude that the nu-processes in water mixtures are the JG secondary relaxations of water. The conclusion is reinforced by the processes behaving similarly to the nu-process found in 6 A thick water layer (two molecular layers) in fully hydrated Na-vermiculite clay, and in water confined in molecular sieves, silica hydrogels, and poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) hydrogels.     

Reorientational Dynamics of Polyethylene Glycol/PAMAM Dendrimer Blends

The reorientational dynamics of dipoles in a series of blends of Polyethylene Glycol (PEG) and poly(amidoamine) (PAMAM) dendrimers were investigated by broadband dielectric relaxation spectroscopy (DRS). Measurements were performed over a wide range of frequency and temperature. Neat PEG exhibits three relaxation processes: the segmental process in the amorphous phase and two faster processes due to the localized motions in the amorphous regions and the rotation of hydroxyl end groups. Addition of dendrimers to the PEG matrix slows down the segmental process in the amorphous phase, but has no effect on the relaxation time of local processes in PEG. However, H-bonding which forms between the PEG oxygen and the amino groups on dendrimer surface is responsible for a shift of local processes in dendrimers to lower frequency. A detail analysis of the effect of temperature, concentration of dendrimers and molecular weight of PEG on the relaxation dynamics is offered.     

Brillouin散射研究聚苯乙烯的动态力学性质和弛豫过程

用Brillouin散射研究了聚苯乙烯的动态力学性质和弛豫过程及交联对它们的影响。除了观察到它们的高温(T>T_g)无定形弛豫外,还在交联的聚苯乙烯中发现了一种新的弛豫过程,研究了不同交联结构对这种弛豫过程的影响,求得其活化能为12kcal/mol左右。分析了它们所关联的分子运动机制。     

过剩热焓松弛CO_2和甲苯在PET薄膜中渗透的影响

本文研究了非晶态、未取向PET薄膜样品在低于T_g温度以下热处理,结构的变化和过剩热焓松弛对CO_2和甲苯溶剂在样品中渗透速率的影响。结果表明,随退火时间增加,从T_g转变吸热峰确定的过剩热焓松弛量、 T_g温度、密度增加,而反式构象含量减少。除分子链堆砌密度提高或自由体积下降外,没有发现非晶相有结构上的变化。因此,CO_2在样品中随退火时间的增加渗透速率下降。然而,由于样品脆性增加和甲苯的溶胀作用,样品表面出现裂纹,使甲苯在样品中的表观渗透速率增加。     

非晶态全同立构聚丙烯玻璃的结晶过程与玻璃化转变

以低于-75℃的干冰-乙醇淬火聚丙烯熔体薄膜,制得了全同立构聚丙烯玻璃。观察此试样在升温过程及等温过程中的比容变化和红外光谱变化,研究它的松弛过程和结晶过程,结果表明在-23℃以下它相当稳定,高于-20℃则有明显的松弛、结晶过程产生。非晶态全同立构聚丙烯的玻璃化转变温度大约稍高于-20℃。     

Relaxation processes in room temperature ionic liquids: the case of 1-butyl-3-methyl imidazolium hexafluorophosphate

A detailed investigation on the nature of the relaxation processes occurring in a typical room temperature ionic liquid (RTIL), namely, 1-butyl-3-methyl imidazolium hexafluorophosphate ([bmim][PF(6)]), is reported. The study was conducted using both elastic and inelastic neutron scattering over a wide temperature range from 10 to 400 K, accessing the dynamic features of both the liquid and glassy amorphous states. In this study, the inelastic fixed energy scan technique has been applied for the first time to this class of materials. Using this technique, the existence of two relaxation processes below the glass transition and a further diffusive process occurring above the glass-liquid transition are observed. The low temperature processes are associated with methyl group rotation and butyl chain relaxation in the glassy state and have been modeled in terms of two Debye-like, Arrhenius activated processes. The high temperature process has been modeled in terms of a Kohlraush-Williams-Watts relaxation, with a distinct Vogel-Fulcher-Tamman temperature dependence. These results provide novel information that will be useful in rationalizing the observed structural and dynamical behavior of RTILs in the amorphous state.     

Relaxation processes at the glass transition in polyamide 11: from rigidity to viscoelasticity

Relaxation processes associated with the glass transition in nonferroelectric and ferroelectric polyamide (PA) 11 are investigated by means of differential scanning calorimetry, dynamic mechanical analysis, and dielectric relaxation spectroscopy (DRS) in order to obtain information about the molecular mobility within the amorphous phase. In particular, the effects of melt quenching, cold drawing, and annealing just below the melting region are studied with respect to potential possibilities and limitations for improving the piezoelectric and pyroelectric properties of PA 11. A relaxation map is obtained from DRS that shows especially the crossover region where the cooperative alpha relaxation and the local beta relaxation merge into a single high-temperature process. No fundamental difference between quenched, cold-drawn, and annealed films is found, though in the cold-drawn (ferroelectric) film the alpha relaxation is suppressed and slowed down, but it is at least partly recovered by subsequent annealing. It is concluded that there exists an amorphous phase in all structures, even in the cold-drawn film. The amorphous phase can be more rigid or more viscoelastic depending on preparation. Cold drawing not only leads to crystallization in a ferroelectric form but also to higher rigidity of the remaining amorphous phase. Annealing just below the melting region after cold drawing causes a stronger phase separation between the crystalline phase and a more viscoelastic amorphous phase.     

Dielectric relaxations and electrical conductivities of poly(alkyl methacrylates) under high pressure

Dielectric properties of four methacrylate polymers (methyl, ethyl, n-butyl and n-octyl) were studied in the frequency range 0.0001 cps–300 kcps at temperatures above and below the glass transition temperature and at various pressures up to 2500 atm. At temperatures well above T_g a single relaxation peak (α′ peak) was observed in the case of the higher n-alkyl methacrylates. However, this peak was split into two peaks, α and β, with decrease in temperature or increase in pressure. The molecular motions corresponding to the α and the β relaxation processes are the micro-Brownian motions of amorphous main chains and of flexible side chains, respectively. From the temperature and the pressure dependence of the average dielectric relaxation time of these polymers the single relaxation process (the α′ process) was attributed to the micro-Brownian motion of the main chain coupled with that of the side chain. The effects of temperature and pressure on the d.c. conductivity of these polymers were also studied.     

Molecular mobility of the paracetamol amorphous form

The purpose of this paper is to study the molecular mobility of paracetamol molecules in their amorphous state below the glass transition temperature (Tg) in order to evaluate the thermodynamic driving force which allows the amorphous form to recrystallize under different polymorphic modifications. Samples were aged at temperatures of -15, 0, 6, and 12 degrees C for periods of time from 1 h to a maximum of 360 h. The extent of physical aging was measured by a DSC study of enthalpy recovery in the glass transition region. The onset temperature of glass transition was also determined (Tg). Enthalpy recovery (deltaH) and change in heat capacity (deltaCp) were used to calculate the mean molecular relaxation time constant (tau) using the empirical Kohlausch-Williams-Watts (KWW) equation. Enthalpy recovery and onset glass transition temperature increased gradually with aging and aging temperatures. Structural equilibrium was reached experimentally only at an aging temperature of 12 degrees C (Tg-10 degrees C), according to the deltaH(infinity) results. The experimental model used is appropriate only at lower aging temperatures, while at higher ones the complexity of the system increases and molecular polymorphic arrangement could be involved. When structural equilibrium is experimentally reached, molecules can be arranged in their lowest energy state, and the polymorphic form I formation is the one preferred.