Ftir Spectroscopy In Pharmaceutical Research And Quality Control: A Comprehensive Review
FTIR spectroscopy: one of the most powerful vibrational spectroscopic techniques used in pharmaceutical research, formulation development and quality control. In brief, the method relies on the interaction of infrared light with molecular vibrations that result in distinct absorption spectra or chemically specific molecular fingerprints. FTIR quickly gave rise to the new gold standard for analysis as it requires little sample preparation, is a non-destructive method and has an excellent reproducibility which makes FTIR an essential analytical tool across all stages in the life cycle of pharmaceutical products. It finds applications in the identification of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), characterization of excipients, drug-excipient compatibility studies, polymorphism analysis, stability testing as well as counterfeit medicine detection, herbal drug authentication and quality assurance on finished formulations.Recent advances in technology such as Attenuated Total Reflectance (ATR)-FTIR, FTIR microscopy, portable spectrometers and chemometric modelling/artificial intelligence (AI) have greatly broadened the analytical scope of FTIR spectroscopy. In addition to FTIR, the combination with Process Analytical Technology (PAT), Quality by Design (QbD), and continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing allows researchers to monitor critical quality attributes of samples in real-time, resulting in improved manufacturing efficiency, product consistency, and compliance with regulatory guidelines. Moreover, machine learning and deep learning algorithms have turned FTIR into a smart analytical platform suitable for automatic spectral analysis, predictive quality assessment, and optimization of processes.This review highlights various aspects as brief outlines detailing the principles, instrumentation, sampling techniques, pharmaceutical applications, quality control strategies, regulatory perspectives and recent technological advances of FTIR spectroscopy along with future prospects. Additionally, the review further emphasizes the increasing applicability of FTIR in intelligent pharmaceutical manufacturing and discusses new prospects for implementing artificial intelligence, digital twin cloud computing and autonomous quality control systems into modern pharmaceutical analytics.