The Forensic Analysis of Pigments from Some Inks by HPTLC

Abstract

This paper aims to develop a simple, cheap, and reliable method for inks fingerprinting and authentication of questioned documents. The solutions of inks were prepared in ethanol. The analysis were done by high-performance thin-layer chromatography on silica gel 60 plates developed with a mixture of n-butanol–iso-propilic alcohol–water–acetic acid, 20:10:10:1 v/v/v/v as mobile phase. The paper also investigates the influence of some environmental factors that can alter the composition of ink from investigated document. The developed method proved to be a powerful, low cost, and simple tool that allowed discriminating between different inks.

Keywords:

• blue pen
• fingerprinting
• forensic analysis
• HPTLC
• inks
• pigments