U.S. ink library is under construction

U.S. government scientists are building the nation’s first library of ink profiles to help identify fraudulent documents.

The researchers at the Midwest Forensics Resource Center (MFRC) — part of the Department of Energy’s Ames National Laboratory at Iowa State University — will use mass spectrometry and a sampling technique called Direct Analysis in Real Time, or DART, to determine the chemical makeup of an ink more quickly and in greater detail than ever before.