On the Correlation of Effective Terahertz Refractive Index and Average Surface Roughness of Pharmaceutical Tablets

Abstract

In this paper, we have studied terahertz (THz) pulse time delay of porous pharmaceutical microcrystalline compacts and also pharmaceutical tablets that contain indomethacin (painkiller) as an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and microcrystalline cellulose as the matrix of the tablet. The porosity of a pharmaceutical tablet is important because it affects the release of drug substance. In addition, surface roughness of the tablet has much importance regarding dissolution of the tablet and hence the rate of drug release. Here, we show, using a training set of tablets containing API and with a priori known tablet’s quality parameters, that the effective refractive index (obtained from THz time delay data) of such porous tablets correlates with the average surface roughness of a tablet. Hence, THz pulse time delay measurement in the transmission mode provides information on both porosity and the average surface roughness of a compact. This is demonstrated for two different sets of pharmaceutical tablets having different porosity and average surface roughness values.