Abstract

Identification of paint on victim’s clothing and a vehicle are valuable for forensic examination when investigating hit-and-run accidents. Automotive paints on clothes are used to prove a victim caused by traffic accident and to identify a suspected vehicle. The comparison of transferred paints between victim’s vehicle and suspected vehicle can be an important evidence in reconstructing the accident situation and in discovering the truth. The paints such as white, yellow, red, blue, or black are hard to examine particle shape under a stereomicroscope because of it is not included aluminum, pearl, and mica flakes in the pigments. The aim of this study under forensic aspect is to compare pigment among basecoat layers of solid paints by identifying inorganic elemental compositions and binder resins of pigments using by micro-FT-IR and micro-XRF spectrometer. The pigment samples were analyzed by using two methods of FT-IR: Reflectance and ATR method. Two methods of FT-IR were useful in discriminating binder resins of pigments by comparing characteristic peaks and patterns of spectra. Also, XRF spectrometer could identify the elemental compositions in inorganic pigments of trace paints which are difficult to compare the identification by FT-IR.