Thermal analysis on historical leather bookbinding treated with PEG and hydroxyapatite nanoparticles

Abstract

Thermal analysis approaches give the opportunity to investigate structural changes in historical leather like as dehydration, crystallization, and melting process. An historical leather sample from nineteenth century was considered in this study. The leather samples were treated with a suspension of nano-hydroxyapatite and polyethylene glycol 400 (PEG 400) in an aqueous solution. The treatment effects on the structural changes in historical leather were studied by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravimetric analysis (TG). DSC technique has been employed to study the thermal-associated changes in historical leather to an artificial aging and the conservation of nanocomposite treatment. Moreover, thermogravimetric analysis and differential thermal gravimetry (TG–DTG) are used as useful methods for the investigation of the mass losses of the treated and untreated samples at the progressive heating in N2 gas flow. Furthermore, scanning electron microscopy studies indicated the collagen fibril changes in treated sample in comparison with those of untreated sample and after accelerated aging test.