Depth profiling of fingerprint and ink signals by SIMS and MeV SIMS

Police institutions currently have no analytical method of knowing whether a fingerprint was deposited before or after the document was written or printed. The suitability of using MeV secondary ion mass spectrometry (i.e. SIMS with an MeV ion beam) to determine the order in which a fingerprint and written text were deposited on paper was therefore investigated. A 10 MeV O4+ beam was used to generate secondary ions from the surface of the samples and to map the molecular fragments from doped fingerprints and inks on paper. The images obtained and the sputtering behaviour of the samples was found to be indicative of the sequence of ink and fingerprint deposits.