AUTHOR=Kolhatkar Gitanjali , Parisien Cédric , Ruediger Andreas , Muehlethaler Cyril 

TITLE=Latent Fingermark Imaging by Single-Metal Deposition of Gold Nanoparticles and Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Chemistry

VOLUME=Volume 7 - 2019

YEAR=2019

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/chemistry/articles/10.3389/fchem.2019.00440

DOI=10.3389/fchem.2019.00440

ISSN=2296-2646

ABSTRACT=In forensic science, there is a high demand for a technique that allows the revelation of fingermarks invisible to the naked eye as well as the chemical information they contain. Here, we present a feasibility study consisting in using both the luminescence enhanced by surface plasmon of gold nanoparticles, and the surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy signal of fingermark chemical components to image latent fingermarks. A latent fingermark deposited on a transparent glass substrate is visually revealed using single-metal deposition employing gold nanoparticles. The resulting enhanced luminescence is monitored over a revealed area of the latent fingermark, displaying light regions of 200-400 µm, corresponding to the fingermark ridges. The Raman signal of the fingermark’s chemical components is enhanced into a measurable signal. Imaging those Raman peaks reveals the ridges pattern, attesting to the potential of our method.