Prior bleaching of virgin or colored hair has minimal impact on SERS-based hair dye identification.

ABSTRACT: In many criminal investigations, scalp hair is commonly used as physical evidence that can be used to identify the suspect. People commonly dye their hair, which requires prebleaching of virgin and previously colored hair. Surface-enhanced raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a minimally destructive, fast, and reliable technique that can detect and identify dyes present on hair. SERS is based on the enhancement provided by Raman scattering from metal nanostructures that can be drop-casted on a small fraction of hair. In this pilot study, we investigate the extent to which prebleaching of virgin and previously colored hair from one subject can alter the accuracy of SERS-based identification of permanent and semipermanent dyes. We found that prebleaching of virgin hair does not affect spectroscopic

SUBMITTER: Pickett D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12863457 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature