Recent Advances in Plasticizers 46 Pharmaceutically used plasticizers The primary role of all plasticizers as low molecular weight non-volatile additives is to improve the flexibility and processability of polymers by lowering the second order transition temperature (glass transition temperature, T g ) (Rosen, 1993) . The extent of T g reduction in the presence of a plasticizer can be used as a parameter to assess the plasticization efficiency (Senichev  Tereshatov, 2004) . When incorporated

more »

... to a polymeric material, a plasticizer improves the workability and flexibility of the polymer by increasing the intermolecular separation of the polymer molecules. This results in a reduction in elastic modulus, tensile strength, polymer melt viscosity and T g . The polymer toughness and flexibility is improved and lower thermal processing temperatures can be employed. (Zhu et al., 2002) . Hard cover, 212 pages Publisher InTech