Mahima Kaushik, Swati Mahendru, Swati Chaudhary and Shrikant Kukreti
For deciphering the secrets of forensic science, nanotechnology has quite extensively been utilized. Generally, for identifying the fingerprints, a lot of combination of different materials and film assemblies have already been utilized. Since the mode of interaction between the nanoparticles and fingerprint marks, is still not clearly understood, fabricating the nanoparticle assemblies for their identification is quite challenging. Complete identification of fingerprint marks which are generally because of a combination of some kind of proteins and fatty acids, is still a difficult task and is only partially being done with the help of different techniques. Nanotechnology has already shown immense potential in many fields like medicine, molecular biology, genetics, material science etc. and it has also marked promising potential even in forensic analysis studies. This review aims to discuss the details of the process of fingerprint formation, their role in forensic analysis along with the latest advances in the field of nanotechnology for their identification. This information may enhance our understanding about the progress in the forensic analysis of fingerprints, which may further be utilized in solving the puzzle of various criminal cases.