Microanalysis of dyes from textiles

The discrimination and/or matching of dye extracts is an important aspect of forensic investigations involving textile samples. The aim of this work was to study the use of Fourier transform infrared spectrometry and diffuse reflectance to obtain IR spectra of dye samples, and the subsequent analysis of these spectra using library searching and principle component analysis. The work in this thesis has demonstrated the development of a simple method for obtaining DRIFT spectra of dye samples. Library searching and principle component analysis were used to distinguish between many types of dye samples, including extracts that were not distinguished using TLC.