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Application note: Analysing pharmaceutical tablets with confocal Raman imaging

This application note presents Raman imaging as a tool for pharmaceutical tablet analysis.

Raman imaging of pharmaceutical tablets

To ensure the efficacy and safety of pharmaceutical formulations, their chemical composition must be monitored during the entire development and production process. Confocal Raman imaging is well suited for this task.1-3 This spectroscopic method is based on the Raman effect, which results from the inelastic scattering of incident light by molecules. The scattered photons show characteristic energy shifts that are visible in a compound’s unique Raman spectrum.

A Raman image of a sample is generated by recording a complete Raman spectrum at each image pixel and colour-coding the resulting map according to the spectra. Raman images of pharmaceutical tablets visualise the spatial distribution of their active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and excipients and reveal contaminations as well as the sample’s homogeneity.1-3