چکیده (انگلیسی):

This study investigated the basic physico-chemical property and binding functionality of commonly used commercial direct compression binders/fillers. The compressibility of these materials was also analyzed using compression pa-rameters derived from the Heckel, Kawakita, and Cooper-Eaton equations. Five classes of excipients were evaluated, including microcrystalline cellulose (MCC), starch, lactose, dicalcium phosphate (DCP), and sugar. In general, the starch category exhibited the highest moisture content fol-lowed by MCC, DCP, lactose, and finally sugar; DCP dis-played the highest density, followed by sugar, lactose, starch, and MCC; the material particle size is highly proc-essing dependent. The data also demonstrated that MCC had moderate flowability, excellent compressibility, and ex-tremely good compact hardness; with some exceptions, starch, lactose, and sugar generally exhibited moderate flowability, compressibility, and hardness; DCP had excel-lent flowability, but poor compressibility and hardness. This research additionally confirmed the binding mechanism that had been well documented: MCC performs as binder be-cause of its plastic deformation under pressure; fragmenta-tion is the predominant mechanism in the case of lactose and DCP; starch and sugar perform by both mechanisms.