In modern medicine pharmaceutical tablets are the most popular method of administering drugs to a patient. Tablets are made up of a combination of active and inactive substances and can be coated or un-coated leading to a huge variety in the final product.
Effective coatings must closely follow the contours of a tablet, be able to survive handling and not stick together. Technically the coating must protect the tablet from moisture and allow a controlled release of the drug once ingested.
In this application note Nanovea have compared the roughness of three different tablet brands according to ISO 25178. The work took place using the HS2000 high speed non-contact optical profilometer.
A scan area of 2mm x 2mm was used with a lateral scan resolution of 5 x 5µm. Each scan was taken using a high speed sensor and took 4 seconds. After completion of the scans a surface roughness analysis was conducted using the advanced Mountain analysis software. Parameters such as surface average, root mean square and maximum surface height were calculated.
