Discrimination of document paper by XRF, LA-ICP-MS and IRMS using multivariate statistical techniques

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the potential of inorganic analysis techniques for the discrimination of document (multipurpose office) paper. A set of 25 different multipurpose office papers from the European market was used for comparison. It appeared that for the single techniques LA-ICP-MS had the highest overall discriminating power. Despite its lower sensitivity, XRF also showed good discriminating power but the correlation with LA-ICP-MS is high. The combination of LA-ICP-MS and IRMS provides a powerful and strongly discriminating set of techniques. (C) 2009 Forensic Science Society. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.