physics

The Interfacial Physics Group

Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Physics

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Preparation and Characterization of Powders for Surfactant Driven Marangoni Spreading

by Aditya Patel

Abstract

Cystic fibrosis is one of the leading causes of death in the United States for which effective treatment that is less harsh for the patients is not readily available. Dry powder inhalation formulations offer many advantages over the traditional liquid or pressurized delivery systems. The spray drying technique is a simple and effective method for preparing dry powder formulations. Powders consisting of lactose, fluorescein di-sodium salt and varying concentrations of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) were spray dried at a temperature well above the boiling point of water. The powder morphology was observed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). At low surfactant concentrations, the spray drier produced spherical and homogeneous solid particles with a smooth surface. Increasing the SDS concentration was found to induce irregularities in the particle morphology such as formation of hollow shells, wrinkles and collapses in the particle shell, and fragile particle structure. The effect of ambient and saturated humidity on the particles was studied using SEM. The size measurement of particles having different SDS concentrations showed that there was no significant dependence of the compositions considered in this work on the particle size distribution.