The research is detailed in a paper, "Facile Catalytic Growth of Cyanoacrylate Nanofibers," published online (January 26) in the British journal, The Royal Society of Chemistry, Chemical Communications. The authors are Pratik J. Mankidy, doctoral candidate in chemical engineering; Ramakrishnan Rajagopalan, research associate at Penn State's Materials Research Laboratory, and Foley, who is also associate vice president for research at the University.
Foley explains that forensic scientists develop latent fingerprints via a process known as cyanoacrylate fuming. Fingerprints left on a surface are exposed to fumes of cyanoacrylate, which form a white polymer residue that makes the ridges of the fingerprint visible.
One of the researchers, Pratik Mankidy, had accidentally left his fingerprints on a piece of research equipment that had been secured with Super Glue'and nanofibers appeared. Putting two and two together, the researchers set out to discover what constituents of fingerprints trigger the cyanoacrylate polymerization on the ridges of fingerprints.
They made synthetic fingerprints from a mixture of a known polymer initiator, common table salt in water, and a non-initiator, linoleic acid, found on fingers. Then they exposed the fake prints to cyanoacrylate fuming. Sure enough, they got nanofibers similar to the ones Mankidy's fingerprints had generated accidentally.
They also fumed cyanoacrylate on single initiators and found thatsodium hydroxide, potassium hydroxide and potassium acetate produced tortellini-like films of the polymer. When ammonium hydroxide was fumed with cyanoacrylate, it produced nano-sized spheres.
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