Mechanochemistry Facilitates a Single-Crystal X-ray Structure Determination of Free Base Naloxone Anhydrate

A method to obtain single crystals of the opioid antagonist naloxone in the free base form is facilitated using mechanochemistry. The application of mechanochemistry reduces the number of steps and makes single crystals readily available from solution compared to using an approach based exclusively on solution or the reported method based on sublimation. The X-ray structure confirms the structure determined using powder diffraction and provides details of hydrogen bonding.