Care must be exercised in the use of Raman spectroscopy for the identification of blood in forensic applications. The 785 nm excited Raman spectra of dried whole human blood are shown to be exclusively due to oxyhemoglobin (oxyHb) or related hemoglobin denaturation products. Raman spectra of whole blood are reported as a function of incident 785 nm laser power and features attributable to heme aggregates are observed for fluences on the order of 104 W/cm2 and 20 sec signal collection times. In particular, the formation of this local heating induced heme aggregate product is indicated by a red-shifting of several heme porphyrin ring vibrational bands, the appearance of a large broad band at 1248 cm−1, the disappearance of the Fe-O2 stretching and bending bands, and the observation of a large overlapping fluorescence. This denaturation product is also observed in the low power excited Raman spectrum of older ambient air exposed bloodstains (≥ two weeks). The 785 nm excited Raman spectrum of methemoglobin whole blood is reported and increasing amounts of this natural denaturation product can also be identified in dried whole blood Raman spectra particularly when the blood has been stored prior to drying. These results indicate that to use 785 nm excited Raman spectra as an identification methodology for forensic applications to maximum effectiveness, incident laser powers need to be kept low to eliminate variable amounts of heme aggregate spectral components contributing to the signal and the natural aging process of hemoglobin denaturation needs to be accounted for. This also suggests that there is a potential opportunity for 785 nm excited Raman to be a sensitive indicator of dried bloodstain age at crime scenes.

An optimized procedure is described for the acquisition of 785 nm excited SERS spectra of dried bloodstains and shown to offer great potential for rapid, portable, highly sensitive and specific,...

We present a theoretical-experimental study of the optical rotation of (R)-glycidylmethylether using a mixed quantum-classical model for solvent effects.