Iodine Fuming Research Papers

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Picture this. You are abducted by someone you do not know and the suspect takes you to a cabin in the middle of nowhere. He makes you do things. A detective located where you were taken after days of research. You are no longer there, so he requests an expert fingerprint specialist to come to the scene and lift the prints to try and find out your captives next move. The fingerprint specialist then asks himself where and what are we trying to find. It is then determined what substance they may use to do the lifting. “If I use Iodine fuming will it disrupt any of the biologicals that helped in leaving the print?” A lot of thought goes into the choices and/or types of material that will be used in the lifting of the print. Can a print actually …show more content…

The new breakthrough technique that has been catching attention is the use of conformal-evaporated-film-by-rotation (CEFR). This approach looks at the geometry rather than the chemistry of each fingerprint. “Latent, sebaceous fingerprints were deposited on forensically relevant substrates, and then CTFs were deposited on these latent fingerprints using the conformal-evaporated-film-by-rotation (CEFR) technique. The specific objective of this basic research was to investigate the fundamental scientific and physical characteristics required to use CTFs to capture and visualize latent, sebaceous fingerprints by identifying the necessary CTF materials and deposition conditions required to develop fingerprints on selected forensically relevant substrates” (Shaler & Lakhtakia, The Acquisition of Sebaceous Fingerprint Topology Using Columnar Thin Films (CTF) on Forensically Relevant Substrates, 2013). For this research to even become helpful they had to test it out. “The research design included a comparison of CTF-developed prints with traditionally developed fingerprints on the same substrates, with minimum variability of …show more content…

I previously stated some of the advantages of using CEFR. For a recap: Double the work, half the time; does not alter the chemistry of the print; the columnar thin films help bring out the textural detail of the print itself. “Another benefit of this approach would be the ability to retrieve fingerprints off fragments from incendiary or explosive devices and still be able to analyze the chemicals used in the device” (Penn State, 2010). Like most things, disadvantages can either be an insane amount or very minimal. There are a few pitfalls of this technique, including the size of the chamber that is used. The chamber that is used is only used in the lab as of right now. They are trying to make a portable one to take to the crime scene. The size of the chamber in the lab has only been used for smaller items of evidence. The other big pitfall for this technique is that we do not know what the shelf life of the residue is because this technique is so new. They would have to do additional tests on the residue for the effects of aging and issues with different environments. Also, this can only be used on non-porous surfaces. Lakhtakia and Shaler’s research showed that in some cases traditional fingerprint techniques have a better print outcome than the columnar thin films but in others the CTF came out more

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