Thermal analysis: a further step in characterizing solid forms obtained by screening crystallization of an API.

Phase and habit selection is a very important step in the early stages of pharmaceutical development of new APIs. In this paper, we show how observation, diffraction and thermal analysis are complementary methods of solid habit and phase characterization. At the end of phase screening of an API several habits and phases can be discriminated by microscopy, XRPD or Raman spectroscopy. Using thermal methods here allows us to separate the 12 phases discriminated by XRPD into: anhydrous, monohydrate, organic monosolvate and heterosolvate phases.