Instruments

Fourier transform infrared radiation spectroscopy can be used to study both organic and inorganic materials.

The dynamic vapor sorption (DVS) is a method used to examine moisture sorption behavior of materials.

X-ray fluorescence is an elemental analysis technique, similar to EDS where an X-ray beam interacts with a material and generates secondary X-rays/fluorescence with specific energies for each chemical element found in the material.

GC/MS is a technique combining the benefits of two distinct analytical methods: GC to separate organic compounds in a complex sample, and MS to facilitate their characterisation, identification and/or quantification.

High Performance Liquid Chromatography is a technique of separation, detection and quantitation of organic compounds contained in a sample. It is an analytical method that has a high capacity of providing information on single components of a sample, which is of paramount importance when dealing with complex and unknown mixtures of organic species, such as paint, or archaeological samples. 

Raman spectroscopy can be used to analyze organic, inorganic, crystalline as well as amorphous materials. Due to its non-destructivity, it is one of the most exploited techniques in the field of heritage science. It is often used as a complementary technique to IR spectroscopy.

This technique combines two different instruments: a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and an energy dispersive X-ray detector (EDX). SEM is one of most frequently used instruments in the field of cultural heritage because it generates high resolution images in the range of 25x - 10 000x magnification using a beam of electrons instead of visible light, as is used in classical microscopy.

X-ray powder diffraction is a technique that uses an X-ray beam to characterize the crystallographic structure of natural and synthetic materials. When crystalline materials are irradiated, a certain portion of the X-ray beams will be scattered by the material’s crystal structure generating a characteristic pattern (diffractogram), unique to each compound.