Development of a Dual-Isotope Procedure for the Tagging and Identification of Manufactured Products: Application to Explosives

Abstract

A novel chemical tagging approach, based on a dual-isotope procedure, is presented. The method has been applied to explosives tagging. The method is based on the addition to the explosive of two enriched isotopes of the same element, which may be already present within it, at a given molar ratio. This dual-isotope approach will give a unique fingerprint to the tagged explosive. Further, the authentication of the tagged explosive or its residues will be obtained by comparison of the ratio of molar fractions experimentally measured by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) with the molar fraction ratio of the tagging mixture. The novelty of this tagging method relies on working with isotope abundances and molar fraction ratios instead of the classical isotope ratios, and this fact constitutes the strong point of the described approach since the molar ratio is not affected by physical, chemical, or biochemical processes, and it is also not disturbed by environmental contamination with the natural abundance element. Furthermore, the use of molar fraction ratios overcomes the nonhomogeneous distribution of the tagging element within the explosive. As the tagging element can be present at trace or ultratrace levels, a very small amount of enriched isotopes needs to be added, denoting a low cost solution. Also, the use of enriched stable isotopes of nontoxic elements will have negligible health effects or affect the environment.