NCJ Number
210457
Journal
Forensic Magazine Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Dated: June/July 2005 Pages: 20-22
Date Published
June 2005
Length
3 pages
Annotation
This article describes the methodology and results for analyzing an unknown chemical mixture that may contain impure chemicals along with illegal substances.
Abstract
The experiment focused on samples of drug materials that contained 0.5 mg per mL of analyte in solvent. The drugs included ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, heroin, and cocaine. The equipment used in the analysis was a gas chromatograph (GC) with a 10-meter column and an autosampler connected to an FT-IR spectrometer, driven with spectroscopy software. The specially designed software allowed the collection of Gram-Schmidt reconstructions and the profiling of the data. Based on the results of this experiment, this article concludes that the combination of GC and FT-IR provides a powerful means for analyzing chemical mixtures to determine their components. Although not as sensitive as gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, the GC-IR method provides structural information on the intact molecule, permitting an analysis of the stereochemistry. In addition, the IR bench provides access to other tools (microscopy, ATR, Raman) that can extend the capabilities of the forensics laboratory. 1 reference