(692e) Acetaminophen Polymorphism and Texture Control Using Novel Coating Regimes

Spray coating and antisolvent addition have emerged as viable techniques that for use in the continuous processing of pharmaceutical molecules. Through controlling supersaturation during crystallization, these techniques are able to create particle distributions. In this work, meniscus guided flow coating is explored as an alternative to spray coating that creates high surface area crystals for use in pharmaceutical formulations. We have observed the formation of film morphology similar to that obtained using a spray coating technique, and unique from what has been previously described using a flow coating method. Acetaminophen is used as a model compound in this study, where films were fabricated and characterized using polarized optical microscopy and grazing incidence x-ray diffraction (GIXD) to determine particle sizes and crystal orientation on the substrate. Results suggest that the coating regime deviates from traditional evaporative or Landau-Levich coating regimes described in literature. Here we present our current hypothesis for the mechanism of crystallization that produces the observed particulate morphology.