TY - JOUR A1 - Simoes, R. A1 - Bernades, C. A1 - Joseph, A. A1 - Piedade, F. A1 - Kraus, Werner A1 - Emmerling, Franziska A1 - Diogo, H. A1 - da Piedade, M. T1 - Polymorphism in simvastatin: Twinning, disorder, and enantiotropic phase transitions N2 - : Simvastatin is one of the most widely used active pharmaceutical ingredients for the treatment of hyperlipidemias. Because the compound is employed as a solid in drug formulations, particular attention should be given to the characterization of different polymorphs, their stability domains, and the nature of the phase transitions that relate them. In this work, the phase transitions delimiting the stability domains of three previously reported simvastatin forms were investigated from structural, energetics, and dynamical points of view based on single crystal X-ray diffraction (SCXRD), hot stage microscopy (HSM), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) experiments (conventional scans and heat capacity measurements), complemented with molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Previous assignments of the crystal forms were confirmed by SCXRD: forms I and II were found to be orthorhombic (P212121, Z′/Z = 1/4) and form III was monoclinic (P21, Z′/Z = 2/4). The obtained results further indicated that (i) the transitions between different forms are observed at 235.9 ± 0.1 K (form III → form II) and at 275.2 ± 0.2 K (form II → form I) in DSC runs carried out at 10 K min−1 and close to these values when other types of techniques are used (e.g., HSM). (ii) They are enantiotropic (i.e., there is a transition temperature relating the two phases before fusion at which the stability order is reversed), fast, reversible, with very little hysteresis between heating and cooling modes, and occur under single crystal to single crystal conditions. (iii) A nucleation and growth mechanism seems to be followed since HSM experiments on single crystals evidenced the propagation of an interface, accompanied by a change of birefringence and crystal contraction or expansion (more subtle in the case of form III → form II), when the phase transitions are triggered. (iv) Consistent with the reversible and small hysteresis nature of the phase transitions, the SCXRD results indicated that the molecular packing is very similar in all forms and the main structural differences are associated with conformational changes of the “ester tail”. (v) The MD simulations further suggested that the tail is essentially “frozen” in two conformations below the III → II transition temperature, becomes progressively less hindered throughout the stability domain of form II, and acquires a large conformational freedom above the II → I transition. Finally, the fact that these transitions were found to be fast and reversible suggests that polymorphism is unlikely to be a problem for pharmaceutical formulations employing crystalline simvastatin because, if present, the III and II forms will readily convert to form I at ambient temperature. KW - Polymorphism KW - Twinning KW - Disorder KW - Simvastatine PY - 2018 DO - https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.molpharmaceut.8b00818 SN - 1543-8384 SN - 1543-8392 VL - 15 IS - 11 SP - 5349 EP - 5360 PB - American Chemical Society CY - Washington, DC AN - OPUS4-46927 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Piedade, M. F. M. A1 - Joseph, A. A1 - Alves, J. R. A1 - Bernardes, C. E. S. A1 - Emmerling, Franziska A1 - Minas da Piedade, M. E. T1 - Crystal Engineering through Solvent Mediated Control of Molecular Conformation: The Case of 5-Hydroxynicotinic Acid N2 - The importance of molecular conformation for polymorphism and its repercussions in terms of tight control over the industrial production of crystalline organic materials with highly reproducible physicochemical properties has long been recognized. Efforts to understand how a crystallization solvent can direct the formation of a polymorph containing a specific molecular conformation are, however, relatively scarce. Nicotinic acid (NA) and its hydroxyl derivatives (2-, 4-, 5-, and 6-hydroxynicotinic acids) are very good models for such studies. Indeed, regardless of the solvent, NA always crystallizes as a single polymorph with the molecule in the same neutral conformation. In contrast, the hydroxyl derivatives are prone to polymorphism and solvate formation and, depending on the crystallization conditions, the molecules in the crystal lattice can exhibit hydroxyl, oxo, or zwitterionic conformations. The present study focused on 5-hydroxynicotinicacid (5HNA) shows that by judicious selection of the solvent it is possible to obtain 1:1 solvates, where solvation memory is not completely lost and the tautomer preferred in solution persists in the crystalline state: zwitterionic in 5HNA·H2O and neutral in 5HNA·DMSO. Nevertheless, upon thermal desolvation the obtained materials evolve to the same unsolvated form where the molecule is in a zwitterionic conformation. The structures of 5HNA·H2O and 5HNA·DMSO obtained from single crystal-ray diffraction are discussed and compared with that of 5HNA solved from powder data. The energetics of the dehydration/desolvation process was also fully characterized by thermogravimetry (TG), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and Calvet microcalorimetry. T2 - BACG 2018 CY - Limerick, Ireland DA - 20.06.2018 KW - Crystal Engineering KW - 5-hydroxynicotinic acid KW - Molecular Conformation PY - 2018 AN - OPUS4-45519 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Caetano, D. M. A1 - Rabuske, T. A1 - Fernandes, J. A1 - Pelkner, Matthias A1 - Fermon, C. A1 - Cardoso, S. A1 - Ribes, B. A1 - Franco, F. A1 - Paul, J. A1 - Piedade, M. A1 - Freitas, P. P. T1 - High-Resolution Nondestructive Test Probes Based on Magnetoresistive N2 - This paper discloses two high-sensitivity probes for Eddy Current Nondestructive Test (NDT) of buried and surface defects. These probes incorporate eight and 32 magnetoresistive sensors, respectively, which are optimized for high sensitivity and spatial resolution. The signal processing and interfacing are carried out by a full-custom application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). The ASIC signal chain performs with a thermal input-referred noise of 30 nV/√Hz at 1 kHz, with 66 mW of power consumption, in a die with 3.7 × 3.4 mm 2 . NDT results are presented, showing that there is an increase in spatial resolution of surface defects when contrasted to prior art, enabling the probes to resolve defects with diameters of 0.44 mm, pitches of 0.6 mm, and minimum edge distance as low as 0.16 mm. The results also show that the probe for buried defects is a good all-round tool for detection of defects under cladding and multiple-plate flat junctions. KW - ASIC KW - Magnetoresistive sensor KW - Nondestructive testing KW - Eddy current testing KW - High resolution PY - 2019 DO - https://doi.org/10.1109/TIE.2018.2879306 VL - 66 IS - 9 SP - 7326 EP - 7337 PB - IEEE AN - OPUS4-48239 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -