Electrochemistry and Raman Spectroscopy (EC-SERS) a Smart Surrogate Sensor for Drug Identification: the special case of fentanyl.

Description:
Routine seized drug field testing uses color tests as presumptive identification of illegal substances.
Instrumental analyses are then conducted at the laboratory to confirm the drug's identity. As an attempt to speed up the process and compensate for the rapid increase in caseloads, several U.S.A. jurisdictions have accepted field test results at preliminary hearings. Nonetheless, the emergence of novel psychoactive substances (NPS) has brought additional challenges to color assays. Spot tests are not sensitive or selective enough to new drug formulations, increasing the number of false positive and false negative results and not meeting legal standards for preliminary hearings. The consequences
overwhelm the judiciary system as the number of cases requiring laboratory testing increase backlogs and raise the costs of analysis and incarceration. Moreover, novel fentanyl and fentalogs, represent a safety concern to law enforcement personnel and first responders. Therefore, there is a critical need to develop alternative rapid, cheap, and reliable screening methods for in-situ drug identification.

This presentation will showcase the advancement of smart and cost-effective portable instrumentation to integrate crime scenes with forensic laboratories in real-time. The primary aim of this study is to develop and validate ultrafast screening methods that increase the reliability and productivity of drug identification. Powerful electrochemical (EC) techniques are presented as surrogate technologies to detect emerging drugs, like fentanyl and NPS, in drug trafficking and seized drug cases. Raman spectroscopy is proposed as an orthogonal approach to EC via spectroelectrochemistry experiment (EC-SERS) to enhance the scientific value of the evidence. Also, this study aims to evaluate chemometric tools for data mining of EC and Raman information for improved drug identification.

Speaker: Luis Arroyo - NIJ