article · Journal of Chemical Reviews
Latent fingerprints serve as a primary marker for personal identification in forensic investigations. Visualising these prints involves various approaches, including chemical, physical, optical, physicochemical, metal oxide, and multi-metal deposition methods. While pairing chemical methods with optical techniques effectively recovers prints of sufficient quality, such processes are often complex and costly. Nanotechnology offers targeted alternatives for visualising, inspecting, gathering, and analysing trace evidence directly at crime scenes. In particular, simple metal oxides such as zinc oxide provide an effective route for latent fingerprint enhancement. Zinc oxide exhibits strong fluorescent properties while offering low material costs and compatibility with different surfaces. Advanced analytical tools, ranging from electron microscopy to mass spectrometry, further aid in evaluating evidence to determine perpetrators.
Clear fingerprint detection is vital for criminal investigations and personal identification. Identifying practical alternatives, such as fluorescent zinc oxide, helps reduce the cost and complexity of recovering hidden prints. This supports faster, more accessible forensic analysis at crime scenes without compromising image quality.
The findings point to applications in forensic science, crime scene investigation kits, and law enforcement. Replacing expensive multi-metal deposition agents with simple metal oxides like zinc oxide could reduce consumable costs for forensic laboratories. However, because the text reviews existing methods and analytical tools rather than a specific product, the commercial readiness appears to be at an applied research stage requiring standardisation for field use.
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Fingerprint (FP) is a global mark used for personal identification. This study reviews recent latent fingerprint (LFP) enhancement techniques including metal oxides, multi-metal deposition (MMD-I/II/SMD/Au-ASP), optical, chemical, physical, and physicochemical. Furthermore, analytical techniques involved in identification, evaluation, and determination of pieces of evidence, and perpetrators including the SEM, TEM, UV-Vis, IR/NIR, SERS, SKP, DLS, MALDI-MSI, and TD analysis were also discussed. Among numerous LFP enhancement techniques, the application of chemical methods in combination with optical techniques has a greater place to recover FPs with sufficient quality. However, instead of using such a complex and costly enhancing agent, nowadays nanotechnology is using specific techniques used for visualizing, inspecting, gathering, and analyzing trace evidence at the scene of a crime. To indicate using simple metal oxides such as ZnO that have superior fluorescent properties and also that consider both the surface and cost of the materials, enhancement of the LFP is functioning.
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DOI: 10.33945/sami/jcr.2020.1.3
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