Polymorphic anhydrate systems have been well studied but until now little attention has been paid to polymorphic hydrate systems. The incorporation of water molecules can complicate the whole polymorphic system and thus impede the control of the crystallization process. In this work, nitrofurantoin monohydrate polymorphs which have the same chemical composition and molar ratio of water but different crystal packing arrangements, have been investigated. The metastable nitrofurantoin monohydrate was found to be difficult to crystallize, where both evaporative and cooling crystallization failed in its production. The possible phase conversion of the nitrofurantoin hydrate polymorphic system was also investigated in a liquid-assisted ball milling process. High-energy solids, e.g., amorphous and cocrystals, have often been created during high-energy ball milling. Metastable nitrofurantoin monohydrate, however, was again not observed during the whole milling process, in contrast to another polymorphic hydrate system, namely niclosamide. During milling of niclosamide anhydrate in ethyl acetatewater mixture the metastable niclosamide monohydrate was formed immediately upon milling (2 min). Under further milling, the metastable niclosamide hydrate started converting to the stable niclosamide hydrate (from 30 min onwards).
IntroductionHydrates are the most common solvates encountered in pharmaceutical compounds, since water and mixtures of water and an organic solvent are frequently used in pharmaceutical processing, e.g., in crystallization and granulation. It has been estimated that approximately one-third of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) are capable of forming a hydrate [1]. Among them, some compounds can form different hydrates by incorporating different amounts of water. Hydrates can also form polymorphs in which hydrates with the same chemical composition and molar ratio of water have different crystal packing arrangements [2][3][4][5]. Different hydrates of a particular compound or polymorphs of a hydrate have different physical properties. In aqueous environment it is unlikely that the most thermodynamically stable hydrate can be overlooked but the formation of stable hydrates may mask the existence of other less stable hydrate forms. Therefore, discovery of a less stable hydrate can be coincidently and sometimes difficult. Several metastable hydrates were only recently discovered [6,7]. This applies similarly to the metastable nitrofurantoin hydrate polymorph. The two nitrofurantoin hydrate polymorphs (monohydrate I and II) have been reported by Pienaar et al. in 1993 [5]. These two hydrates have the same chemical composition and same molar ratio of water in crystalline lattice, differing only in the crystal packing arrangements. Since 1993, a number of studies have investigated nitrofurantoin hydrate [5,[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15], but only two of them have observed the formation of metastable nitrofurantoin hydrate polymorph (monohydrate I) [14,15]. Crystallization of this metastable nitrofuranto...