1,8-Diazafluoren-9-one (DFO) is an

aromatic In organic chemistry, aromaticity is a chemical property describing the way in which a conjugated system, conjugated ring of unsaturated bonds, lone pairs, or empty orbitals exhibits a stabilization stronger than would be expected from conjugati ...

ketone In organic chemistry, a ketone is an organic compound with the structure , where R and R' can be a variety of carbon-containing substituents. Ketones contain a carbonyl group (a carbon-oxygen double bond C=O). The simplest ketone is acetone ( ...

first synthesized in 1950. It is used to find

fingerprint A fingerprint is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. The recovery of partial fingerprints from a crime scene is an important method of forensic science. Moisture and grease on a finger result in fingerprints on surfa ...

s on porous surfaces. It makes fingerprints glow when they are lit by blue-green light. DFO reacts with

amino acid Amino acids are organic compounds that contain both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. Although over 500 amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the 22 α-amino acids incorporated into proteins. Only these 22 a ...

s present in the fingerprint to form highly

fluorescent Fluorescence is one of two kinds of photoluminescence, the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation. When exposed to ultraviolet radiation, many substances will glow (fluoresce) with color ...

derivatives. Excitation with light at ~470 nm results in emission at ~570 nm.

References

External links

RCMP report on 1,8-diazafluoren-9-one

Steroids UK
Ketones Forensic chemicals Nitrogen heterocycles Heterocyclic compounds with 3 rings {{forensics-stub