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Microreflectance FTIR Techniques Applied to Materials Encountered in Forensic Examination of Documents

NCJ Number
165756
Journal
Journal of Forensic Sciences Volume: 41 Issue: 5 Dated: (September 1996) Pages: 812-823
Author(s)
J Andrasko
Date Published
1996
Length
12 pages
Annotation
Microreflectance Fourier transform infrared spectrometry (FTIR) was applied to the forensic examination of documents, including black printing ink, paper, plastic, photocopy toner, and transfer letters to increase the ability of nondestructive optical techniques to distinguish between genuine and counterfeit samples.
Abstract
Euclidean distances were calculated for some of the materials to evaluate the discrimination power of FTIR reflectance techniques, and some results were compared with those obtained by diffuse reflectance FTIR (DRIFTS). Unlike DRIFTS, microreflectance FTIR was nondestructive even for large samples. It was determined that nondestructive techniques may be applied to many different materials without the need to obtain good results because additional techniques may also be used and that microreflectance FTIR is a valuable complement to other optical methods for forensically examining documents. 10 references, 2 tables, and 8 figures