The overview of the property system and characterization techniques of Chinese medicine materials before the pharmaceutical

At present, the modernization of Chinese medicine preparations (CMPs) is still a challenging task. The 3 typical Chinese medicine materials (CMMs) used for preparing CMPs are the powders, extracts, and components of Chinese medicine and their properties of CMMs are important for designing CMPs. Basing on our long term research, we have established a property system for CMMs according to the state of CMMs under an exactly condition and according to the interaction characteristics between substances. The property system could be divided into 5 categories:material composition, spatial structure, body property, surface property, physicochemical properties, and they could also be divided into 18 subcategories. Furthermore, we also established the corresponding index and characterization system, where the 61 indexes and characterization techniques were systematically summarized. At last, we hope that the article will promote the modernization of CMPs.