Surface analysis for compositional, chemical and structural imaging in pharmaceutics with mass spectrometry: A ToF-SIMS perspective

We review the application of time-of-flight secondary-ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) for the surface chemical identification and distribution analysis (mapping) of pharmaceutically relevant materials. Specifically we explore the characterization of both solid state pharmaceuticals and bio-pharmaceuticals by ToF-SIMS; highlighting specific case studies concerning the distribution and stability of pharmaceutical actives within solid matrices, the face-specific properties of pharmaceutical crystals and elucidation of the structure/conformation of adsorbed proteins. Finally, potential future applications of ToF-SIMS in pharmaceutics are detailed.