Advanced coatings for consolidation of pottery artifacts against deterioration

Abstract

After being buried in the soil for long periods exceeding thousands of years, archeological pottery showed many phases of deterioration leaving them with extreme impairment. Polymeric coatings are the traditional consolidants which can be used in the improvement of many of these discovered artifacts. Many of the used polymers can offer good protection performance, but this is accompanied with some problems; such as low stability with chromatic changes and wetting-drying cycles. The process of reinforcing the polymeric coating with functional pigments can enhance their performance in providing advanced functions to the consolidated coatings. In this work, polymers of styrene acrylic and VEOVA were integrated with inorganic pigment of strontium aluminate doped with traces of cerium to add-valued properties to the polymeric mixture and provide modified mechanical and anti-microbiological protection for the pottery artifacts. Different techniques were used to evaluate the effect of the prepared formulations such as their color change index, porosity, compressive strength, digital and scanning microscope besides the antimicrobial effects. The results showed that styrene-acrylic polymer integrated with the prepared strontium aluminate pigment was better in its protection and consolidating properties than that of VEOVA.