The Role of ICP-MS in Forensics

Obviously, when attempting to link a piece of evidence to a particular person or object, chemical analysis can play a decisive role. There are numerous analytical techniques that can offer this type of information, but when it comes to elemental analysis, very few of them can compete with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) in terms of detection power, selectivity, and multi-element capabilities. 

However, elemental analysis is often not discriminative enough. It has been demonstrated that, on some occasions, it is possible to differentiate between 

Therefore, isotopic analysis is a powerful tool that is often used in forensic investigations, although it is not always simple to achieve unambiguous conclusions, as discussed in Section 14.2 [6, 7]. 

One of the advantages of using ICP-MS is that it can provide both multi-elemental and isotopic information, making its use very appealing in forensics. However, it must be noted that the methodologies used for multi-element and isotopic analysis are not even similar, so that different procedures have to be used, even if the same instrument is utilized. Moreover, the best results of isotopic analysis are obtained when dedicated ICP-MS instrumentation is used [e.g., multi-collector (MC) ICP-MS], so that is very likely that different ICP-MS instruments will be utilized in a laboratory if both elemental and isotopic analysis are targeted. 

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