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Volume 114
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Quantifying ibuprofen powder adhesion: Impact of surface roughness and substrate material (Open Access)
Fatemeh A. Talebi a, Zobaideh Haydari a, Christopher Hodges a, Andrew Stockdale a, Mozhdeh Mehrabi a, Arash Rabbani b, David Harbottle a, Ali Hassanpour a *
a School of Chemical and Process Engineering, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT, United Kingdom
b School of Computer Science, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT, United Kingdom
10.1016/j.partic.2026.04.001
Volume 114, July 2026, Pages 101-120
Received 22 July 2025, Revised 23 March 2026, Accepted 1 April 2026, Available online 12 April 2026, Version of Record 24 April 2026.
E-mail: a.hassanpour@leeds.ac.uk
Highlights

• The effective work of adhesion, Г, was determined by employing the drop test method.

• Influence of substrate material on effective work of adhesion, Г, is studied.

• Effect of surface roughness on effective work of adhesion, Г, is examined.

• The surface energy trend from contact angle measurement aligned with adhesion values.


Abstract

Powder adhesion influences its behaviour during pharmaceutical processing, where particle-particle and particle-surface interactions often hinder consistent powder mobility and lead to unacceptable content uniformity. This study investigates how substrate material and surface roughness affect the effective work of adhesion, Γ, of ibuprofen powders measured using the drop test method. Five substrates; aluminium, acrylic, stainless steel, brass and copper, were examined in both polished and scratched conditions. The effective work of adhesion of the polished aluminium, acrylic, stainless steel, brass and copper were 19.6 ± 2.9, 26.4 ± 4.02, 27.5 ± 5.1, 32.2 ± 2.8 and 38.5 ± 2.6 mJ/m2, respectively. Contact angle measurements confirmed that surface free energy trends were consistent with the adhesion values. Aluminium's low adhesion was attributed to its naturally formed oxide layer and rougher surface. A scratch-test rig was utilised to introduce scratches across five substrates, where adhesion values followed the same trend to polished surfaces. Generally, roughness reduced the adhesion except for aluminium, where deeper valleys in the polished state, likely arising from polishing and scratching variations or from uncontrolled surface handling prior to scratching, resulted in higher adhesion values. Additionally, we developed an automated algorithm to analyze substrate images and quantify the critical particle diameter and effective work of adhesion. While the results aligned with manual findings for polished surfaces, scratched surfaces showed discrepancies due to higher levels of image noise.

Graphical abstract
Keywords
Effective work of adhesion; Drop test method; Substrate material; Surface roughness; Automated algorithm; Surface free energy
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