Abstract

Exploration of sintering technique in the pharmaceutical sciences is relatively recent. The aim of the present study was to prepare thermally sintered floating matrix tablets of Nicardipine HCL (NIC) and to study the effect of sintering conditions on in-vitro dissolution study, in-vitro buoyancy properties, hardness and friability. The tablets were prepared by direct compression method using HPMC K100M as matrix forming polymer and sodium bicarbonate as gas generating agent. The prepared tablets were sintered at two different temperatures like 600C and 700C for two different time periods 1.5 hr and 3 hr in a hot air oven. The results showed that the release rate of the drug was inversely related to the sintering temperature and the time of sintering. Increasing the temperature or time of exposure to a particular temperature often decreased the release rate of the drug. By using sintering technique floating lag time and total floating time of tablets was found to be decreased and increased respectively, with increase in the sintering temperature and sintering time. In addition the hardness of the sintered tablets was increased with increase in sintering temperature and duration of sintering, where as friability of tablets was found to be decreased with increasing sintering time. An optimised formulation F2 sintered at 700c for 3 hr was selected based on their drug retarding properties and comparatively low proportion of polymer. The optimised formulation followed Korsmeyer-Peppas release kinetics with Fickian diffusion mechanism. There was no evidence of interaction between the drug and polymer used as shown in the FTIR studies

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