Temperature of the superglue fuming process under the scope of accreditation

Abstract The superglue fuming process is widely used to develop latent fingermarks in the forensic community. That is why we confidently submitted this method for accreditation both in our central and departmental forensic laboratories. A review by non-practitioner auditors raised a point for which we had no answer. “Why must you heat cyanoacrylate to 120 °C?”. While the influence of humidity on the quality of fingermark development has been abundantly studied and published, we found no publications about the optimal cyanoacrylate fumigation temperature. We wonder if the quality of a fingermark developed by the superglue fuming process could be better at a different temperature. The aim of this study is to estimate the influence of the fumigation temperature on the quality of developed fingermarks for a constant humidity rate. The results show that the quality of a fingermark is appreciably better at 150 °C but a temperature of 120 °C gives very satisfactory results.