A Study of Variation in Ball Point Ink of Different Brands by Thin Layer Chromatography

The introduction of chromatographic methods for the comparison of writing inks had a major impact on the detection of fraudulent documents. Subtle alterations to documents such as tax returns, wills, insurance claims and divorce settlements, can have significant financial implications. The detection of alterations or additions to a document and an assessment of when the document was written has therefore become a prime concern of document examiners and ink chemist. Thin Layer Chromatography is the most successful method for examination of ink. In this study ten different brands of ball point pens were taken to study the variations such as color, tint, and feathering, fluidity of ink and retention factor of ink. The results show variation with the passage of time which could be helpful in detection of forgery and could use as comparative study with the suspect sample. Thus, the changing parameters play an important document cases.