Novel optical photothermal infrared (O-PTIR) spectroscopy for the noninvasive characterization of heritage glass-metal objects.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 35245121.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1126/sciadv.abl6769 and PMC identifier 8896789.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Optical photothermal infrared (O-PTIR) is a recently developed molecular spectroscopy technique that allows to noninvasively obtain chemical information on organic and inorganic samples at a submicrometric scale. The high spatial resolution (≈450 nm), lack of sample preparation, and comparability of the spectral results to traditional Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy make it a promising candidate for the analysis of cultural heritage. In this work, the potential of O-PTIR for the noninvasive characterization of small heritage objects (few cubic centimeters) is demonstrated on a series of degraded 16th century brass and glass decorative elements. These small and challenging samples, typically encountering limitations with existing noninvasive methods such as macroscopic x-ray powder diffraction and μRaman, were successfully characterized by O-PTIR, ultimately identifying the markers of glass-induced metal corrosion processes. The results clearly demonstrate how O-PTIR can be easily implemented in a noninvasive multianalytical strategy for the study of heritage materials, making it a fundamental tool for cultural heritage analyses.