Characterization and structure analysis of the heterosolvate of erythromycin thiocyanate

Erythromycin thiocyanate is widely used for the production of other macrolide antibiotics. In this work, a novel heterosolvate of this pharmaceutical compound has been obtained and characterized for the first time, which was transformed from the dihydrate form in the acetone solvent through evaporation crystallization. Thermal behavior together with compositional analysis revealed that both water and acetone molecules participated in the formation of the crystal lattice which is rarely reported before. The general chemical name of the heterosolvate may be defined as erythromycin thiocyanate sesquihydrate hemiacetonate. Furthermore, studies on solid-state spectral analysis provided strong evidence of intermolecular hydrogen bonds in heterosolvate crystals. According to the crystal structure determined by single crystal X-ray diffraction, the formation mechanism of the heterosolvate is proposed in which strong multi-hydrogen bondings between water and solute molecules form the layer structure. While acetone molecules form single-hydrogen bonds with solutes and reside in channels between layers. This well explains why acetone solvent is easy to escape from the crystal structure during desolvation.