Characterization of Excipients by Near Infra-red Spectroscopy: A guide to the characterization of excipients by NIR and Chemometrics

The potential of Near Infrared Spectroscopy in the characterization of excipient raw material was investigated in this study. Near Infrared spectroscopy is a fast and accurate analytical technique for the identification of raw materials. Spectra were collected under the optimized conditions and then chemometric tools were used to analyse the collected data. Principal component analysis was used mostly to characterize the material. In the PCA scores and loadings were used to get information. Every principal component gives different information. Derivatization was also used to remove some of the physical effects and also meancentering was used to remove the average spectrum and to highlight the variations. Thus it was confirmed that by using correct parameters Near Infrared Spectroscopy along with chemometric analysis could be a valuable tool to characterise any of the pharmaceutical raw material especially excipients.