Studies on the Deterioration of Ancient Thai Manuscripts

Abstract

Various Thai manuscripts, commonly made from Khoi, suffer the severe deterioration primarily from the degradation of cellulose. Temperature, light, humidity, oxygen, pollution, and microorganisms are the main environmental factors for the conditions of manuscript collections. The degree of the cellulose deterioration can be studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), attenuated total reflectance Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The morphology of the sample was revealed by Scanning Electron Microscopy. The fiber disintegration and the presence of inorganic particles can be found on the paper surface. The ATR-FTIR results showed the characteristic functional groups of cellulose as follows: nOH (3650–3100 cm-1), nCH (3000–2850 cm-1), dOH (~1640 cm-1), dCH (1420-1300 cm-1), nC-O-C of the b-glucosidic linkage (~1100 cm-1), and dCO or CC (~910 cm cm-1). The presence of inorganic filling, CO32- salt (~1400 cm-1) could not be determined explicitly due to the signal overlap with dCH. The relative intensities of the absorption peaks in dCH of the ancient paper samples are different to those of the new khoi paper. The X-ray diffraction of each sample showed the characteristic peaks of crystalline fraction at 2q between 22.0º and 23.0º and the amorphous fraction at 2q between 15.0º and 16.0º. However, the intensity ratio of the crystalline and amorphous phases for the ancient paper is less than that of the new paper.