Facile preparation of a novel red-emissive carbon dots powder formulation and its efficiency evaluation in latent fingerprint development using artificial intelligence

The development and comparison of latent fingerprints (LFPs) yield crucial insights within the realm of forensic science. This procedure involves two-step aimed at enhancing the visualization of LFPs and conducting digital processing to facilitate their comparison with a database. Herein, red-emissive Nitrogen and Boron codoped carbon dots (N, B-CDred) were synthesized by solvothermal method. The TEM analysis of N, B-CDred provides visual evidence for the successful formation of sub-3 nm carbon dots. The reduced size of N, B-CDred offers advantages in terms of their ability to be effectively incorporated into the pore structure of various matrices. Subsequently, the amalgamation of N, B-CDred with a blend of plaster and corn starch resulted in the formation of N, B-CDred @ plaster-corn starch phosphors. The aforementioned phosphors was efficacious in the development of LFPs using the dusting technique, whereby the emission of red fluorescence resulting from the excitation of fluorophore N, B-CDred under green light substantially enhance the visualization of LFPs. By employing an artificial intelligence program to analyze fluorescence images of the developed LFPs, the results demonstrate remarkable match scores exceeding 90 % for the samples, indicating a substantial similarity to the "Control" reference.