Abstract
Surface modifiers through redox routes emerged as the most preferred in forensic science. Aryldiazonium salts stabilized with tetrachloroaurate (III) are excellent redox modifiers in the development of latent fingerprints on nickel surfaces. Nickel coins were fingerprinted and developed with a stable diazonium salt [O2N‐4‐C6H4N≡N]AuCl4. The developed surfaces were studied using XPS that showed the presence of the characteristic gold and organic modifier peaks. Also, imaging analysis using SEM showed clusters of gold. EDS quantitative analysis estimated a good amount of gold presence on the fingerprinted compared with the non‐fingerprinted area. Our results are important in the analysis of nickel coins using a spontaneous route by simply depositing diazonium salt solution drops on the nickel surface without any additional reducing agent. This work brings strong supporting evidence for the efficient combination of diazonium surface chemistry and high‐performance surface analytical tools (XPS, SEM‐EDS) in the fast, spontaneous development of fingerprints and their morphological and chemical composition assessments.
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