Fabrication of personalized dosage oral pharmaceuticals using additive manufacturing (AM) provides patients with customizable, locally manufactured, and cost-efficient tablets, while reducing the probability of side-effects. Because of the aging worldwide population, biomedical technology must continually innovate to maintain quality of life and life expectancy, where personalized dosage tablets will greatly aid in this effort. This manuscript reports a comprehensive study of linear and 4-arm star polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) over a range of molecular weights as polymeric binders for binder jetting additive manufacturing, and their effect on physical tablet properties. Formulation of varying molecular weights and concentrations of linear and 4-arm star PVP in DI water and subsequent jetting revealed relationships between the critical overlap concentrations (C*) and jettability on thermal inkjet systems. After printing with a commercially available ZCorp Spectrum Z510 printer with a HP11 printhead with a lactose and powdered sugar powder bed, subsequent measurement of compressive strength, compressive modulus, and porosity revealed structure-property relationships between molecular weight, polymer concentration, and linear and 4-arm star architectures with physical properties of binder jetted tablets. This study elucidated the dominating factor to increase compressive strength of a tablet is dependent on the weight percent polymer in the binder, which filled in void spaces after drying. Because 4-arm star polymers have lower solution viscosities compared to linear analogs at the same molecular weights, they were jettable at the highest concentrations, thus producing the strongest tablets at a compressive strength of 1.2 MPa. Finally, the inclusion of an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), acetaminophen, revealed a maintenance of tablet physical properties across 5-50 total wt % API in each tablet.

Comparison of linear and 4-arm star polyvinylpyrrolidone for aqueous binder jetting additive manufacturing of personalized dosage tablets

2019 Fall National Meeting

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