Cyanoacrylate fuming or superglue fuming is a widely used technique for developing fingerprints. Small and large, local and federal, private and public crime labs alike use mostly cyanoacrylate fuming in order to detect fingerprints on surfaces. After the fuming of cyanoacrylate, the fingerprints are slightly opaque and visible to the eye but still difficult to view ridge details. In order to obtain more detail to photograph prints, a variety of processes can be used to make the fingerprints more visible which include physical methods such as powdering and chemical methods such as dying. The chemical methods of fingerprinting are based on the theory that the chemical being applied, in this case dye, is reacting with the cyanoacrylate on the surface of the print to reveal the print which can then be documented and saved as evidence.Many studies have been done on different aspects of the process. However, little is known about the mechanism that causes the cyanoacrylate to adhere to the surface of the fingerprint. There are some theories but there is no experimental data to support the mechanism.  The polymerization of the cyanoacrylate on the surface of the fingerprint is initiated with a nucleophile but the specific nucleophile is not currently known. Through computational and experimental work, the polymerization of the cyanoacrylate and the component of the fingerprint that initiates polymerization are studied. Experimentally, this was studied by polymerizing the cyanoacrylate on solutions that contain one component of a fingerprint and analyzing the polymerization amount on the fingerprint.  The interaction of the dye with the polymerized cyanoacrylate is also analyzed using various substituted cyanoacrylates to understand the mechanism of dye-cyanoacrylate interactions. Understanding the mechanism could lead to an optimized substituted cyanoacrylate that yields more consistent and detailed fingerprints.

Exploring the polymerization of cyanoacrylate and the polymer-dye interaction for applications in fingerprint development

247th National Meeting (2014)

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