Can X-Ray Powder Diffraction Be a Suitable Forensic Method for Illicit Drug Identification?

Abstract

New psychoactive substances (NPSs) are associated with a significant number of intoxications. With the number of readily available forms of these drugs rising every year, there are even risks for the general public. Consequently, there is a high demand for methods sufficiently sensitive to detect NPSs in samples found at the crime scene. Infrared (IR) and Raman spectroscopies are commonly used for such detection, but they have limitations; for example, fluorescence in Raman can overlay the signal and when the sample is a mixture sometimes neither Raman nor IR is able to identify the compounds. Here, we investigate the potential of X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD) to analyse samples seized on the black market. A series of psychoactive substances (heroin, cocaine, mephedrone, ephylone, butylone, JWH-073, and naphyrone) was measured. Comparison of their diffraction patterns with those of the respective standards showed that XRPD was able to identify each of the substances. The same samples were analyzed using IR and Raman, which in both cases were not able to detect the compounds in all of the samples. These results suggest that XRPD could be a valuable addition to the range of forensic tools used to detect these compounds in illicit drug samples.

Portable testing techniques for the analysis of drug materials

“…XRPD can, in theory, identify any substance present in a sample, however, this would require the use of a database. Compared with IR and Raman spectroscopy, XRPD has some advantages to be used as a complementary technique (Jur asek et al, 2020). XRPD can avoid issues with fluorescence and complex mixtures that are faced by conventional vibrational spectroscopy.…”

“…XRPD can avoid issues with fluorescence and complex mixtures that are faced by conventional vibrational spectroscopy. However, it should be noted that XRD can only analyze solid samples, meaning it will not be a suitable method for some illicit drug materials (Jurásek et al, 2020).…”

Intriguing Cytotoxicity of the Street Dissociative Anesthetic Methoxphenidine: Unexpected Impurities Spotted

“…For these purposes, it is therefore essential to also implement other instrumental techniques that can detect these inorganic impurities [43]. X-ray powder diffraction is particularly suitable for this purpose [44][45][46][47]. Not only can it identify the inorganic impurity in the drug sample, but it can also distinguish whether such an inorganic impurity is part of a crystal lattice (as shown in our article) or whether the sample is solely a mixture of substances.…”

“…Taken together with the ability of XRPD to distinguish between the polymorphs, XRPD may provide several fruitful data from a single analysis [48]. To exploit the entire potential of the X-ray powder diffraction without the need of using a standard in the measurement, it is necessary to create a database of psychoactive substances and common diluents/adulterants [44,49].…”

Recent Advances of Chitosan-Based Injectable Hydrogels for Bone and Dental Tissue Regeneration

“…et al, 2019;Wang et al, 2020a). Physically crosslinked hydrogels possess great advantages in biological applications because of the absence of chemical crosslinkers that may bring about the unpredictable and potential toxicity for the tissues, but their reversible architectures, poor stability and low mechanics greatly limited the scope of applications (Zhang et al, 2013;Maitra and Shukla, 2014;Parhi, 2017;Li et al, 2018). On the other hand, chemical crosslinkers are constructed by the covalent linkage of polymer chains together within the network using high-effective synthetic methods, such as click chemistry, Schiff base reaction, free radical polymerization, etc.…”