National Institute of Justice Continuation Awards

Project Summary for 2001-LT-BX-K004 This project is supplement #1 to grant 2001-LT-BX-K004 and will use these funds to develop HPLC/spectrometric techniques to the point that they are ready for computer- searchable database (library) on ink analysis. The result of this would be the straightforward identification (by maker and model) of ink from HPLC/spectrometric analyses of unknown forensic ink samples. The goals to be accomplished to reach this objective are 1) basic development of both HPLC/FT-IR and HPLC/MS approached to ink analysis, 2) choice of the superior approach by comparing the performance of the two on a representative set of ink samples, and 3)detailed development of procedures for the chosen approach for as many ink types as possible. At the end of the project, the chosen approach should be sufficiently developed for database construction to begin. The present project will examine the writing inks only, but much of the results should also be applicable to ink-jet inks and commercial printing inks, so the techniques could eventually be expanded to include these as well. nca/ncf