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Chemical processes involved in the development of latent fingerprints using the cyanoacrylate fuming method have been studied. Two major types of latent prints have been investigated—clean and oily prints. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) has been used as a tool for determining the morphology of the polymer developed separately on clean and oily prints after cyanoacrylate fuming. A correlation between the chemical composition of an aged latent fingerprint, prior to development, and the quality of a developed fingerprint has been observed in the morphology. The moisture in the print prior to fuming has been found to be more important than the moisture in the air during fuming for the development of a useful latent print. In addition, the amount of time required to develop a high quality latent print has been found to be within 2 min. The cyanoacrylate polymerization process is extremely rapid. When heat is used to accelerate the fuming process, typically a period of 2 min is required to develop the print. The optimum development time depends upon the concentration of cyanoacrylate vapors within the enclosure.

Exposure to light or heat, or simply a dearth of fingerprint material, renders some latent fingerprints undetectable using conventional methods. We begin to address such elusive fingerprints using detection targeting photo- and thermally stable fingerprint constituents: surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). SERS can give descriptive vibrational spectra of amino acids, among other robust fingerprint constituents, and good sensitivity can be attained by improving metal-dielectric nanoparticle substrates. With SERS chemical imaging, vibrational bands' intensities recreate a visual of fingerprint topography. The impact of nanoparticle synthesis route, dispersal methodology-deposition solvent, and laser wavelength are discussed, as are data from enhanced vibrational spectra of fingerprint components. SERS and Raman chemical images of fingerprints and realistic contaminants are shown. To our knowledge, this represents the first SERS imaging of fingerprints. In conclusion, this work progresses toward the ultimate goal of vibrationally detecting latent prints that would otherwise remain undetected using traditional development methods.

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