A critical review of fundamentals and applications of electrochemical development and imaging of latent fingerprints

Highlights: • A critical review on electrochemical development and imaging of latent fingerprints. • Electrochemical systems for fingerprint development and imaging are summarized. • Underlying fundamentals and potential applications of these methods are presented. • Limitations of existing methods and perspectives on future research are discussed. -- Abstract: Latent fingerprints containing morphological and biochemical information are one of the most important evidence existed at crime scenes that can be used for personal identification. Despite some traditional development and imaging methods, various novel methods based on different principles have been explored to visualize latent fingerprints in recent years, among which many interesting methods established by using electrochemical techniques have proved to be very efficient. Up to now, a number of electrochemical systems have been utilized to create or detect the disparity between fingerprint ridge area and background area, resulting in sensitive development and imaging of latent fingerprints. In this review, we highlight the recent progress in electrochemical development and imaging of latent fingerprints. To be specific, the introduction of fundamentals and applications of this research area is separated into four main sections: fingerprint development by electrochemical deposition, fingerprint imaging by electrochemiluminescence (ECL), fingerprint imaging by scanning probe electrochemistry techniques, and fingerprint analysis using other electrochemical methods. Finally, our perspectives on future research directions are also presented and discussed.