Experimental laser cleaning of black crusted calcareous stones, carried on to study the laser yellowing of petreous
surfaces, showed different colour alterations on the exposed surface, after laser irradiation, depending not only on the
incident fluence but also with the crust or stone irradiated layer.
Three distinct techniques were used for the cleaning of Fe alloys objects that present surface corrosion. These objects are presently kept in a museologic space.
The techniques used to remove the corrosion were mechanical, chemical (EDTA solution) and LASER (pulsed CO2 and Nd:YAG - Q-Switch), and their efficiency and selectivity compared.
The chemical characterisation of the metallic surface and the evaluation of the cleaning degree of the Fe objects were done by transmission 57Fe Mossbauer spectroscopy.
The results of the Mossbauer spectroscopy presented here, together with optical microscope observations of the original and cleaned objects suggest that: - The mechanical process of cleaning does not allow for the total removal of corrosion, reaching easily the substratum and so causing mechanical damage on the object.
- The cleaning methods using EDTA in confined environment and high control of the experimental conditions, remove the corrosion products efficiently, without damaging the surface of the object.
- The cleaning methods using LASER although not achieving the complete removal of corrosion, showed clear characteristics of selectivity in a given range of operating parameters.
Although laser cleaning is being applied nowadays in different fields, mainly for artworks conservation, laser cleaning of metals, namely precious metals, is still far from providing widely acceptable results, producing instead "dull" surfaces.
In this paper, Silver samples with diverse surface characteristics have been used in order to test laser cleaning, with different kinds of contamination such as copper particles, silver sulphide and industrial production oil.
Also different kind of laser sources, from UV (Excimer, KrF) to mid-Infra Red (CO2) have been applied with several pulse lengths from nano seconds to milliseconds.
An overview of the results in terms of cleaning efficiency and cleaning success is presented and correlated with the optical properties of the contaminations and thermal properties of sample substrate.
The evaluation of laser cleaning has been performed by different analysis techniques such as SEM and EDX and colorimetry.
Laser glass marking is currently used in several glass materials for different purposes, such as bar codes for product tracking, brand logos or just decoration. Systems with a variety of different laser sources, with inherent power ranges, wavelengths and pulse regimes have been used, namely CO2, Nd:YAG, Excimer, Ti-Sapphire lasers. CO2 Lasers systems, although being a reliable tool for materials processing, and very compact in the case of sealed low power lasers, are usually associated with a localized thermal loading on the material, causing brittle materials like glass to crack around the irradiated area. In this experimental study a pulsed CO2 laser was used to direct marking the glass surface. The temporal characteristics of the laser pulse--pulse length, period and duty cycle were varied, and glass materials with different thermal properties were used in order to correlate the marking process--cracking or softening with or without material removal with the laser and material characteristics. Glass materials with major industrial application, such as soda-lima, borosilicate (PYREX) glasses and crystal have been investigated. Laser marked areas have been characterized in terms of surface optical properties, like diffuse and direct reflectance and transmittance for white light, directly related with marked surface quality.
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