Influence of the particle size of copovidone and crospovidone on tablet characteristics
Copovidone and crospovidone are commonly used excipients in solid oral dosage forms for many decades. Typically, copovidone is used as dry binder and crospovidone as disintegrant in tableting formulations. The use of dry binder and disintegrant needs to be balanced to assure both: strong but quickly disintegrating tablets.
In this study the influence of different copovidone and crospovidone grades on the tablet’s tensile strength and the ejected solid fraction (or relative density) at different compression pressures were evaluated systematically: Compactability plots (tensile strength as a function of the compression pressure), compressibility plots (ejected solid fraction as a function of the compression pressure) and bondability plots (tensile strength as a function of the ejected solid fraction) were generated to visualize the influence of the individual excipient on the tableting characteristics.
Contour plots were generated to illustrate the influence of each excipient on the tensile strength and disintegration time of the resulting tablets at different compression pressures. Potential interactions and synergies respectively between the different grades of the tested excipients were illustrated.