Thermomicroscopy and its pharmaceuticals applications

The solid state studies of pharmaceutical ingredients is essential for complete characterization of pharmaceutical products. The pharmaceutical industry utilizes a wide variety of techniques to research, develop, and manufacture compounds which possess high therapeutic value. Thermo microscopy or thermo-optical technique or hot stage microscopy (HSM) is quite extensively used to characterize the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). Apart from the basic morphological information about a compound, other characetristic solid state transformations, such as desolvation, phase transition, melting, incompatibilty, and decomposition, can also be identified. The combination of traditional hot-stage microscopy with new technologies such as greater resolution and rate for image caturing, novel means of achieving heating and cooling rates and more sophisticated softwares can allow more comprehensive understanding of the solid state propertis. The rapid interpretation of the results, small sample requirement to obtain valuable data and fairly an easy technique to master makes HSM an preferred choice for the pharmaceutical development industry. For the above mentioned reasons, thermomicroscopy finds its application in the pharmaceutical industry in a variety of ways.