Abstract
Statistical chemometric method was used in discriminating 24 blue ballpoint pen inks from six different brands (Pilot, Carera, Stabilo, Faber-Castle, G-soft and Papermate) available in Malaysian market. Discrimination method was developed based on the combination of infrared spectra (IR) and chemometric technique which comprise of principal component analysis (PCA) and Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering (AHC). The chemometric software used was XLSTAT 2011. The spectral region 4000–400 cm-1 was used to ‘fingerprint’ each ink from the 24 samples. PCA was used to detect any outliers whereas AHC was used to separate the ballpoint pen inks into their own class. This study showed that acceptable statistical discrimination (70.92% correct classification of the ballpoint pen dataset) between these 24 samples. FTIR-PCA and FTIR-AHC were successfully discriminate three different brands which were Carera, Pilot and g-soft. While, the other three brands, Papermate, Fabercastle and Stabilo could not be discriminated perfectly. The results of this study indicate that Transmission FTIR Spectroscopy coupled with chemometrics is useful discriminating tool for forensic studies involving inks.
Highlights
INTRODUCTIONVarious writing instruments have been used for writing process. Nowadays, quill and nib pens have given way to other classes of writing instruments such as the ballpoint, roller ball and gel pens which have different requirements for the properties of their writing inks [1]
Since ancient times, various writing instruments have been used for writing process
The discrimination process of blue ballpoint pen inks and their elemental composition can be done by observing the position of peak and their wavenumber
Summary
Various writing instruments have been used for writing process. Nowadays, quill and nib pens have given way to other classes of writing instruments such as the ballpoint, roller ball and gel pens which have different requirements for the properties of their writing inks [1]. The non-destructive methods are Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Video Spectral Comparative (VSC) and Raman Spectroscopy [2, 5, 6] These techniques are complex and require a l ong time consuming analytical steps [7]. Halim et al / Malaysian Journal of Fundamental & Applied Sciences Vol., No.3 (2012) 159-165 similarities and differences among samples in a d ataset [10] This can be demonstrated by the application of chemometric techniques using Principle components analysis (PCA) and Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering (AHC) to the chromatographic or spectral data. It is used to investigate the measurable variability between the same colors of pens with different brands by matching of an ink to the database of chromatograms This technique shows quantitative analysis [4]. The transmittance values were normalized to the range 0–1
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