Benzoic acid derivatives as luminescent sublimation dyes in cyanoacrylate fuming of latent fingerprints

Abstract Development of latent prints employing cyanoacrylate ester (CA) can be a multistep process including CA fuming and subsequent fluorescent staining to produce fingerprints sufficient contrast for comparison work. To enable single‐step fuming—staining process, selection fluorophores have been developed as sublimation dyes in fuming. A greater array such luminescent would allow users flexibility selecting particular dye—CA combination best suit their processing needs. Toward this end, six benzoic acid derivatives were evaluated use under elementary conditions using single non‐porous surface type an inexpensive handheld UV lamp excitation. Two derivatives, 2‐hydroxybenzoic (salicylic acid) 2‐aminobenzoic (anthranilic acid), identified new potential with stained excited at 254 nm. The fluorescence intensity stability produced via the over approximately weeks image statistical analysis.