XRD is a first aid analytical tool in pharmaceutical
industry for the analysis of drug formulations (Fig.
2). Various XRD applications in pharmaceuticals
have shifted drug design, discovery and manufacturing
processes into novel dimensions. It is a wellknown
non-destructive method popularly used to
measure final dosage shape of active pharmaceutical
ingredients (APIs), identify impurity and monitor
structural changes that might occur during drugs
formulation. It discovers API structural orientation,
sample types (crystalline or amorphous), physicochemical
properties, forms (solid, liquid or gas) of
active particle, excipients, conversation process,
impurities and quantify final ingredients in finished
drugs.XRD often produces newband for novel compound
which can be analyzed further by solid form
screening and selection procedure [148]. Besides,
patterns diffraction can be analyzed by a newly developed multiple
pattern analysis software and data
clusters [8]. XRD characterizes polymorphic drug
particles that often occur during solid phase
interconversion [8].Polymorphic drug molecules are problematic because of their different and novel
physico-chemical properties. So, analysis of polymorphic
drug is a challenging task [149] but could
be performed using single crystal X-ray diffraction
and XRD [8]. Variable temperature XRD works on
both crystalline and noncrystalline materials to evaluate
temperatures and humidity which affects the
overall quality and stability of the final drugs [8,150-
153].