Discrimination of document paper by XRF, LA–ICP–MS and IRMS using multivariate statistical techniques

van Es, A.; de Koeijer, J.; van der Peijl, G.

doi:10.1016/j.scijus.2009.03.006

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Volume 49, Issue 2 , Pages 120-126, June 2009

Discrimination of document paper by XRF, LA–ICP–MS and IRMS using multivariate statistical techniques

Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI), PO Box 24044, 2490 AA The Hague, The Netherlands

Received 14 January 2009; received in revised form 23 March 2009; accepted 28 March 2009. published online 04 May 2009.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the potential of inorganic analysis techniques for the discrimination of document (multipurpose office) paper. A set of 25 different multipurpose office papers from the European market was used for comparison. It appeared that for the single techniques LA–ICP–MS had the highest overall discriminating power. Despite its lower sensitivity, XRF also showed good discriminating power but the correlation with LA–ICP–MS is high. The combination of LA–ICP–MS and IRMS provides a powerful and strongly discriminating set of techniques.

Keywords: Document paper, Forensic, XRF, LA–ICP–MS, IRMS, Paper analysis