Optical Microscopy of Polyols

Pharmaceutically applicable polyols are represented with different chemical compounds, with different structures, solid-state properties, and microscopic appearance. Microscopic appearance can be a useful source of information, such as for visual and semiquantitative description of particle size and granules or crystal shape. Microscopic analysis is usually used in combination with other methods for versatile characterization of powder material.
Thus, project-related samples of commercially available polyols (such as sucrose, dextrin, inulin, xylitol, sorbitol, isomalt, mannitol, and oligofructose) were characterized with microscopic analysis. The representative microscopic pictures were organized in a dataset.
Method. Polyol powder samples were pictured with an optical microscope (equipped with lens #4 and top lighting) coupled with a digital camera (BA410E; Motic, Xiamen, China). The size of every picture corresponds to 2.3 mm per 3.3 mm.
Data. The list of pictured polyols is provided in the CSV file "Microscopic list," including their chemical name, brand name, and manufacturer. Every picture file is in JPG format and is called in accordance with its chemical and brand name.