Figure 1

Many of the liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS) techniques employed for explosives analysis can also be used to enhance forensic fiber discrimination through a molecular-level comparison of the dyes extracted from questioned and known fibers. The greatest challenge in this research is to reduce the limits of detection so that dye analysis to be performed on single fibers. Improved fiber analysis methods are pushing back the frontiers of this traditional area of forensic trace analysis, which has recently come under increased criticism in criminal proceedings.

Our studies of forensic fiber analysis by LC-MS have demonstrated the advantages of taking fiber dye analysis to the molecular level where higher discriminating power can be achieved.

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Michael Sigman
Department of Chemistry
University of Central Florida
Orlando, FL 32816