Raman Microscopy: Three Variations on a Pharmaceutical Theme

Abstract

The development of novel pharmaceuticals is driven by the requirement for high efficacy while retaining reduced side effects. This means that new medicines are very often relatively low dose (below 10% w/w drug substance in a tablet) and therefore they pose significant analytical challenges. Typical requirements include chemical identification of the drug substance, its crystalline form, the presence of any degradants and the distribution of drug substance and excipients.Raman spectroscopy is becoming one of the favoured techniques for looking at tablets. Raman is a non-invasive and non-destructive technique that is very important in the pharmaceutical industry. In addition, with a Raman microscope it is possible to obtain spectra from particles of micrometer dimensions. This means that limits of detection can be lower for inhomogeneous samples than those of non-microscopic Raman techniques.