Dry-Coating of Powder Particles is Current Trend in Pharmaceutical Field

Modification of surface attributes of particles, usually accomplished by coating, is desirous to enhance and maintain their usability. Coating is a multi-step process involves application of the coating material (CoM) onto the substrate, herein powder particles, where the process along with device/ equipment monitors surface attributes of the applied coating. Nowadays competitive market calls for cost cutting to survive product(s). Thus saving of energy and time, minimising number and quantity of additives, reducing and shortening process steps; consequently minimising the coating process cost are main goals while developing coating process for powder particle. Innovation of processes for dry-powder coating (DPC) along with their further development and refinement finds solution to said issues. Further, DPC process does not calls for liquid solvent or solution thus are viewed as cost-effective and environmentally safe, DPC process uses thermo-mechanical methods like mechanofusion, magnetic assisted impaction coating (MAIC), hybridization, rotating fluid-bed process, theta-composer, hot-melt coating (HMC), and many others. Besides these available are non-thermo-mechanical methods namely electrostatic coating; supercritical fluids (SCF) based methods like rapid expansion of supercritical fluid (RESF), gas anti-solvent (GAS), SCF anti-solvent, gas-saturated solution (GSS); vapour coating; and others. Basing on said thermo-mechanical and non-thermo-mechanical principle several DPC methods/ process had been reported in scientific literatures and patents. Said DPC method founds multidisciplinary applications like drug delivery and drug development. Diverse devices are there for the DPC process; their method of working, principle, limitations and benefits along with their applicability in pharmaceutical field are discussed and presented in this article. Keywords: Dry, particle, coating, pharmaceutical, process