This study demonstrates, for the first time, the ability of surface-enhanced Raman chemical imaging (SER-CI) combined with multivariate analysis to detect low levels (0.1% (w/w)) of a polymorphic form in a pharmaceutical mixture. In the studied formulation, piroxicam was used as a model molecule to develop this approach. Piroxicam is a widely available non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, exhibiting an interesting case of polymorphism, with two most commonly observed forms (β and α2). In this work, the SERS spectra of piroxicam polymorphic forms β and α2 are presented. These forms showed clear spectral differences in terms of band position and intensity. From a crystallographic point of view, the difference of exaltation between both forms was correlated with a preferred orientation of crystallites of form α2 making its SERS detection difficult compared to form β. A preferred orientation of the (1k0) crystallographic planes of α2 was demonstrated in samples, not promoting an appropriate molecular orientation onto the metallic surface. Additionally, a semi-quantitative approach using SER-CI combined with chemometric tools was developed enabling to detect crystallites of form β below the detection limit of conventional Raman microscopy. The exaltation of the Raman signal in the presence of silver nanoparticles allowed a higher sensitivity and a reduction of the acquisition time by a factor of 6.
Keywords: Chemical imaging; Multivariate analysis; Piroxicam; Polymorphism; Silver nanoparticles; Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS).
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