Solubility and conversion of carbamazepine polymorphs in supercritical carbon dioxide

The aim of this work was to investigate whether mixtures of carbamazepine polymorphs could be processed in supercritical (SC) CO(2) in order to obtain the pure stable crystalline phase. To accomplish this goal the solubility of carbamazepine polymorphs I and III in supercritical CO(2) was first assessed using a low solvent flux dynamic method. Mixtures of Form I and Form III were processed in dynamic or static conditions in SC-CO(2). Differential scanning calorimetry, Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy, and powder X-ray diffractometry were used to analyse solid samples in terms of polymorph composition. It was found that Form I and Form III of carbamazepine have different solubility in supercritical CO(2) at 55 degrees C above 300 bar. Due to the transformation of the metastable form, conversion of Form I into Form III can be carried out on a binary mixture of the two polymorphs by treating the mixture at 55 degrees C and 350 bar, under both static and dynamic conditions, via its solubilization in supercritical CO(2).