Characterization of a Novel Co₂TiO₄ Nanopowder for the Rapid Identification of Latent and Blood Fingerprints

ABSTRACT

Co₂TiO₄ nanopowders for detecting latent and blood fingerprints were prepared by a traditional coprecipitation method and characterized by X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, energy-dispersive spectroscopy, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The results from morphological and componential characterization showed that green Co₂TiO₄ nanopowders with inverse spinel structure were almost spherical and uniform in size without any impurities. To demonstrate the effectiveness of Co₂TiO₄ nanopowders, powder dusting and small particle reagent methods were successfully used to develop latent and blood fingerprints on various substrates including nonporous surfaces, semiporous surfaces, and porous surfaces. The principles of the small particle reagent method for developing latent blood fingerprints were also investigated. Our experiments on lit aged fingerprints exhibited high sensitivity, high contrast, and high selectivity, suggesting that Co₂TiO₄ nanopowders may be a novel probe to develop both latent and blood fingerprints at crime scenes due to their fine ridge details, ease of use, and rapidness.

KEYWORDS:

• Co₂TiO₄ nanopowder
• forensic science
• latent blood fingerprint
• latent fingerprint
• rapid identification

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially funded by the Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51274261), the Chongqing Research Program of Basic Research and Frontier Technology (os. cstc2017jcyjAX0140, cstc2017jcyjAX0244, cstc2016jcyjA0503, and cstc2015jcyjBX0074), the Research Program of Chongqing Municipal Education Commission (No. KJ1601108), and the Research Program of Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences (No. R2015CH10).