Inkjet printing for pharmaceutics - A review of research and manufacturing.

Global regulatory, manufacturing and consumer trends are driving a need for change in current pharmaceutical sector business models, with a specific focus on the inherently expensive research costs, high-risk capital-intensive scale-up and the traditional centralised batch manufacturing paradigm. New technologies, such as inkjet printing, are being explored to radically transform pharmaceutical production processing and the end-to-end supply chain. This review provides a brief summary of inkjet printing technologies and their current applications in manufacturing before examining the business context driving the exploration of inkjet printing in the pharmaceutical sector.

Development of high-throughput glass inkjet devices for pharmaceutical applications.

The application of the inkjet method to pharmaceutical products is promising. To make this realistic, not only does the throughput of this method need to be increased, but also the components should be inert to pharmaceutical preparations. We present designs of glass-based inkjet devices that are capable of producing droplets at high rates.

Printing stable liquid tracks on a surface with finite receding contact angle.

We have used high-speed imaging to study the formation of liquid tracks on a surface with nonzero receding contact angle, by the sequential deposition of liquid drops. For small drop spacing we found good agreement with the track morphology predicted by an existing line stability model. In addition, we confirmed definitively the preferential drop-to-bead fluid flow and the predicted drop spreading variation in the scalloped line and paired bead formation regimes.