Pressure Dependence of the Crystallization Rate for the S-Enantiomer and a Racemic Mixture of Ibuprofen
Résumé
This paper examines the pressure effect on the crystallization rate of the pharmaceutically active enantiomerically pure S-enantiomer and the racemic mixture of the well-known drug ibuprofen. Performed experimental studies revealed that at ambient pressure S-ibuprofen crystallizes faster than the racemic mixture. When the pressure increases, the crystallization rate slows down for both systems, but interestingly it is more apparent in the case of the S-enantiomer. It is found that this experimentally observed trend can be understood based on the predictions of the classical nucleation theory. We suggest that the solid–liquid interfacial free energy is the main reason for the observed variations in S- and RS-ibuprofen’s stability behaviors. Employing a special method of computational studies, i.e., the capillary fluctuation method, we show that the increase in pressure affects the solid–liquid interfacial free energy for S- and RS-ibuprofen in an entirely different way. Importantly, the detected differences correspond to the experimentally observed variations in the overall crystallization rates.
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