A group of UK chemists has used a desktop inkjet printer to prepare a metastable form of the anti-epileptic drug carbamazepine. Co-crystals have been prepared by first depositing very small droplets of template solution followed by droplets of the drug solution, which leads to rapid evaporation and crystallisation. Simon Gaisford of UCL School of Pharmacy, London, who lead the project, told Chemistry World that this polymorph has only been produced previously by layering it molecule by molecule onto a template crystal using vapour deposition.
‘Desktop inkjet printers offer amazing control of droplet position in order to produce photographic images,’ says Gaisford. ‘So in this instance the technology can really be considered to be more advanced than is needed for crystal templating, although it is evident that the smaller the droplet size and printing resolution the better the potential of the technique.’
To read more on this story, please visit Chemistry World. The research article can be accessed below:
Rapid preparation of pharmaceutical co-crystals with thermal ink-jet printing
Asma B. M. Buanz, Richard Telford, Ian J. Scowen and Simon Gaisford
CrystEngComm, 2013,15, 1031-1035
DOI: 10.1039/C2CE26519B
