In-depth investigation on physicochemical and thermal properties of magnesium (II) gluconate using spectroscopic and thermoanalytical techniques

Magnesium gluconate is a classical organometallic pharmaceutical compound used for the prevention and treatment of hypomagnesemia as a source of magnesium ion. The present research described the in-depth study on solid state properties viz. physicochemical and thermal properties of magnesium gluconate using sophisticated analytical techniques like Powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), particle size analysis (PSA), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectrometry, ultraviolet–visible (UV–Vis) spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA)/differential thermogravimetric analysis (DTG), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Magnesium gluconate was found to be crystalline in nature along with the crystallite size ranging from 14.10 to 47.35 nm. The particle size distribution was at d(0.1)=6.552 µm, d(0.5)=38.299 µm, d(0.9)=173.712 µm and D(4,3)=67.122 µm along with the specific surface area of 0.372 m2/g. The wavelength for the maximum absorbance was at 198.0 nm. Magnesium gluconate exhibited 88.51% weight loss with three stages of thermal degradation process up to 895.18 °C from room temperature. The TGA/DTG thermograms of the analyte indicated that magnesium gluconate was thermally stable up to around 165 °C. Consequently, the melting temperature of magnesium gluconate was found to be 169.90 °C along with the enthalpy of fusion of 308.7 J/g. Thus, the authors conclude that the achieved results from this study are very useful in pharmaceutical and nutraceutical industries for the identification, characterization and qualitative analysis of magnesium gluconate for preformulation studies and also for developing magnesium gluconate based novel formulation.