Spray Freeze-drying – The Process of Choice for Low Water Soluble Drugs?

Most of the novel highly potent drugs, developed on the basis of modern molecular medicine, taking into account cell surface recognition techniques, show poor water solubility. A chemical modification of the drug substance enhancing the solubility often decreases the pharmacological activity. Thus, as an alternative an increase of the solubility can be obtained by the reduction of the size of the drug particles. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to obtain micro or nanosized drug particles by classical or more advanced crystallization using supercritical gases or by milling techniques. In addition, nanosized particles are often not physically stable and need to be stabilized in an appropriate matrix. Thus, it may be of interest to manufacture directly nanosized drug particles stabilized in an inert hydrophilic matrix, i.e. nanostructured and nanocomposite systems. Solid solutions and solid dispersions represent nanostructured and nanocomposite systems. In this context, the use of the vacuum-fluidized-bed technique for the spray-drying of a low water soluble drug cosolubilized with a hydrophilic excipient in a polar organic solvent is discussed. In order to avoid the use of organic solvents, a special spray-freeze-drying technique working at atmospheric pressure is presented. This process is very suitable for temperature and otherwise sensitive drugs such as pharmaproteins.     

“Slow” active control of combustion instabilities by modification of liquid fuel spray properties

This paper describes an experimental investigation of the feasibility of using “slow” active control approaches, which “instantaneously” change liquid fuel spray properties, to suppress combustion instabilities. The objective of this control approach was to break up the feedback between the combustion process heat release and combustor pressure oscillations that drive the instability by changing the characteristics of the combustion process (e.g., the characteristic combustion time). To demonstrate the feasibility of such control, this study used a proprietary fuel injector (Nanomiser^TM), which can vary its fuel spray properties, to investigate the dependence of acoustics–combustion process coupling, i.e., the driving of combustion instabilities, upon the fuel spray properties. This study showed that by changing the spray characteristics it is possible to significantly damp combustion instabilities. Furthermore, using combustion zone chemiluminescence distributions, which were obtained by Abel’s deconvolution synchronized with measured acoustic data, it has been shown that the instabilities were mostly driven midway between the combustor centerline and wall, a short distance downstream from the flame holder, where the mean axial flow velocity is approximately zero in the vortex near the flame holder. The results of this study strongly suggest that a “slow” active control system that employs controllable fuel injectors could be effectively used to prevent the onset of detrimental combustion instabilities.     

Deposition conditions in tailoring the morphology of highly porous reticular films prepared by electrostatic spray deposition (ESD) technique

Spongy-like reticular structure is a unique morphology fabricated by electrostatic spray deposition (ESD) technique. The effects of solvent, substrate temperature, precursor feeding rate, static electric field strength, and deposition time on tailoring the reticular structure were investigated. Scanning electron microscopy was used to observe the film morphology. MnO_x or LiMn₂O₄ were selected as the model materials. It is found that in addition to the conventional solvent butyl carbitol, other kinds of solvents such as ethylene glycol and propylene glycol can also be used to obtain reticular films at a suitable substrate temperature. Porous films with a low cross-linking degree pore structure can be prepared by increasing precursor feeding rate or decreasing substrate temperature. Increasing the deposition time or the electric field strength helps to obtain reticular films with more homogeneous pore size distribution. In addition, the addition of a high boiling-point solvent in mixed alcohol solvent results in the increase of proper substrate temperature. It is concluded that the fluidity of the spray droplets on the surface of a hot substrate is an important factor to form a reticular film.     

Magnetic properties of lanthanum orthoferrite fine powders prepared by different chemical routes

Fine powders of lanthanum iron oxide, LaFeO₃, have been prepared by solid state reaction as well as sol-gel synthesis and nebulized spray pyrolysis. Structures, morphologies and magnetic susceptibility measurements of these powders have been examined. The powders prepared by all the three low-temperature routes contain nearly spherical particles with an average diameter of 40 nm. These samples show a lower Neel temperature than the powder prepared by solid state reaction besides showing much lower magnetic susceptibility at low temperatures. Dedicated to Professor C N R Rao on his 70th birthday     

热喷涂技术的现状和发展

介绍了热喷涂工艺的特点，喷涂方法的种类及其技术以及热喷涂技术的应用概况，并对热喷涂技术的发展方向给予了展望。     

Determination of impurities in highly pure platinum by inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry

In this work, a cyclone spray chamber system is used in conjunction with an inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometer instead of the conventional Scott-type chamber system to reduce the lower limit of detection achieved by the instrument, and an internal standard element (Y) is introduced to eliminate the effects caused by the drift in the plasma background level. An ICP-AES method for the determination of 13 impurity elements in a highly pure platinum sample has been developed. In this method, it is not necessary either to add a platinum matrix to the calibration standard or to separate and concentrate the elements to be determined in the samples. The effect of the platinum matrix on the elements to be analyzed is corrected for by a background equivalent concentration subtraction method. The determination ranges of the method are as follows: 0.00010-0.0050% for Mg, Mn, Cu, Ag, Fe and Zn; 0.00030-0.015% for Au, Ir, Ni and Pb; 0.00050-0.025% for Rh and Al; and 0.00080-0.040% for Pd. The method is simple, rapid and accurate, and can be applied to the analysis of 99.9–99.995% pure platinum.     

Dynamic light-scattering analysis of the electrostatic interaction of hexahistidine-tagged cytochrome P450 enzyme with semiconductor quantum dots.

Currently, there is great interest in the development of methods suitable for determining the stoichiometry of biomolecules attached to nanoparticles. We describe the use of the dynamic light-scattering technique (DLS) to determine the stoichiometry of the protein cytochrome P450(BSbeta) attached to CdS and CdSe quantum dots (QDs). The enzyme-conjugated QDs have different diffusion characteristics compared to the QD and enzyme precursors, expressed in their size, scattering intensity as well as zeta-potential values. The significant enhancement of the scattering intensity of QDs observed upon conjugation with the P450(BSbeta) due to the refractive-index increment and the systematic variation in zeta potential resulting from charge neutralization of the anionic QDs by the cationic histidine-tagged P450(BSbeta) have been used for stoichiometry determination.     

Interactions of water-soluble polymers with small molecules II: Poly(2-diethylaminoethyl methacrylate)-methyl orange and its homolog systems at different temperatures

In order to investigate the interactions of poly(2-diethylaminoethyl methacrylate) (PDEAEMA) with methyl orange and its homologs in solution, temperature dependence of the complex formation has been examined in detail by the measurements of transmittance and specific conductance for the systems. Furthermore, the binding course of dyes to PDEAEMA has been studied on the basis of thermodynamic parameters obtained from equilibrium dialysis experiments at different temperatures. It was observed that the flocculation process shifted to lower dye concentrations in accordance with increasing hydrophobicity of the dyes in the order, methyl orange < ethyl orange < butyl orange, and the process of complex formation was characterized by three separate regions according to the slope of specific conductivity-mixing ratio curve for mixtures of PDEAEMA and dye. The temperature dependences of F,H and S suggest that, for dyes-PDEAEMA complex formation, the hydrophobic interaction is predominant at a low temperature but the electrostatic interaction becomes important as the temperature increases.     

An algorithm for the calculation of the electrostatic repulsion between surface coated with a charge membrane

We propose a numerical procedure for the calculation of the electrostatic repulsion force between two identical, parallel surfaces immersed in anab electrolyte solution. These surfaces are coated with an ion-penetrable membrane carrying fixed charges. The amount of fixed charges is governed by the dissociation of the functional groups in the membrane phase. The effect of pH on the degree of dissociation of these functional groups is taken into account. The difficulty of extensive use of Jacobi elliptic function in the numerical treatment of Poisson-Boltzmann equation can be circumvented by resorting to the present algorithm.     

含金属纳米粒子的层层自组装及单壁碳纳米管的催化生长

利用层间的静电吸附作用，重氮树脂和不同种类的含金属纳米粒子被依次吸附到硅片表面形成层层自组装膜。通过改变自组装膜的层数可以控制纳米粒子在表面吸附的量，同时利用重氮树脂的光敏特性可以实现纳米粒子在表面的图案化排布。以这些纳米粒子为催化剂，研究了单壁碳纳米管在硅片表面的化学气相沉积生长。