A QUÍMICA DE PRODUTOS NATURAIS APLICADOS A REVELADORES DE IMPRESSÕES DIGITAIS LATENTES

THE CHEMISTRY OF NATURAL PRODUCTS APPLIED TO LATENT FINGERMARK DEVELOPERS. Natural formulations have attracted great interest of many researchers regarding their use as latent fingermark developers powders due their important characteristics as the presence of natural pigments in these materials that offer a good contrast on the applied surface and also luminescent properties, which facilitates the visualization of minutiae in problematic substrates such as multicolored surfaces. In addition, natural powders present low toxicity, are widely available and economically viable. In this sense, the present work addresses the application of several natural products to enhance fingermarks visualization. The natural products were obtained from various sources such as seaweed, spices as well as other sources such as terrestrial and herbaceous plants. The evaluated powders are composed by compounds as chlorophyll, phycocyanins, curcumins, lawsone, fatty acids, coumarins, flavonoids and terpenes. These powders showed good adhesion to latent fingermarks, with similar or superior efficiency to the available powders on different surfaces with clear visualization of the minutiae. The development of new powders applicable to papiloscopy are extremely important since the conventional available powders, besides being expensive, are imported and within the national context there is a great lack of these revealing materials within forensic investigations by the Federal Police and in laboratories of research.