A New Database of the Quantitative Cathodoluminescence of the Main Quarry Marbles Used in Antiquity

Philippe Blanc,Anna Gutiérrez Garcia-Moreno,M Pilar Lapuente Mercadal

doi:10.3390/min10040381

Philippe Blanc, Anna Gutiérrez Garcia-Moreno + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/min10040381

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Journal: Minerals	Publication Date: Apr 23, 2020
Citations: 18	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Sorbonne Université, Université Paris Cité

Abstract

Quantitative cathodoluminescence (CL) has rarely been applied for the archaeometric studies concerning marble provenance, despite its potential. This paper develops the method and provides a new database of the parameters obtained from the main marble quarries used in antiquity. With a total number of 473 marble samples from ten districts of the central and eastern Mediterranean, it is the first database on quantitative CL, with the additional advantage of being the same samples that have already characterized by other conventional techniques and that are available in the literature. Focused on the measurements of the intensity peaks at the UV and visible spectra, registered by a spectrometer coupled to a scanning electron microscope (CL-SEM), the representative values are plotted on different useful diagrams to be applied in the identification of marble provenance studies, as a complementary tool of other analyses.

Highlights

Carbonates and other minerals emit radiation in the form of photons when they are bombarded by a source of energy; the process of luminescence is called cathodoluminescence (CL) since the excitation source is a beam of high-energy electrons emitted by a cathode
Focused on the measurements of the intensity peaks at the UV and visible spectra, registered by a spectrometer coupled to a scanning electron microscope (CL-scanning electron microscopy (SEM)), the representative values are plotted on different useful diagrams to be applied in the identification of marble provenance studies, as a complementary tool of other analyses
Once the operational process for obtaining the spectra was completed, and their representative peaks with their intensity measured, different graphs of quantitative CL were projected in Section 3.2, where according to their maximum grain size (MGS) different representation plots of the CL intensity quantification for all classical marbles were proposed

Summary

Introduction

Carbonates and other minerals emit radiation in the form of photons when they are bombarded by a source of energy; the process of luminescence is called cathodoluminescence (CL) since the excitation source is a beam of high-energy electrons emitted by a cathode. In general terms, during the process of electronic excitation, each unpaired electron in the crystal structure is promoted to a higher electronic level but, after a few microseconds, it returns back, emitting a photon of a defined wavelength. The emission of these characteristic photons is in the range of visible luminescence, and in the UV radiation. It is well known that in carbonate minerals Ca2+ and Mg2+ can be replaced by Mn2+ promoting CL [5,6,7,8]

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