Singapore, Mar 4, 2008: US-headquartered FEI and UK-based Malvern Instruments have released Quanta Morphologi, a new solution combining the performance of FEI’s Quanta FEG scanning electron microscope and Malvern’s proven Morphologi particle characterization software. Now onwards Quanta Morphologi users, including pharmaceutical quality control method development labs, will have direct analysis methods to obtain both size and shape information on sub-micron particles.

 

Quanta Morphologi will provide pharmaceutical companies greater control over new products and drug formulations that require particle manufacture at increasingly smaller nanoscale dimensions for a wide variety of advanced therapeutic applications.

 

Mr Matt Harris, Vice President of FEI’s NanoBiology division said, in pharmaceutical manufacturing, quality assurance and control laboratories must ensure that quality standards are constantly met for raw materials, intermediates and final products. Particle size and shape can dramatically alter the physical and therapeutic properties of active pharmaceutical ingredients. Until now, there have been no direct methods to characterize sub-micron particles.  Combining the magnification and resolving power of the Quanta scanning electron microscope (SEM) with Malvern Instruments’ softwares provide a critical turnkey solution.

 

With Quanta Morphologi, users will be able to create reference methods for quality control process design, perform automated particle analysis, obtain surface detail, and perform statistical analysis to more fully characterize particle size and shape distributions.  The most important morphological parameters for differentiating a set of samples, such as good and bad sample batches can be defined and subtle changes in a product or process can be readily identified.