Tag Archives: Gabriel Maria Ingo

Better than today’s nanotechnology-enabled coatings: thin film metal coatings from ancient and medieval times

A July 24, 2013 news item on Nanowerk highlights work by Italian researchers on the topic of gilding and thin films (Note: A link has been removed),

Artists and craftsmen more than 2,000 years ago developed thin-film coating technology unrivaled even by today’s standards for producing DVDs, solar cells, electronic devices and other products. Understanding these sophisticated metal-plating techniques from ancient times, described in the ACS journal Accounts of Chemical Research (“Ancient Mercury-Based Plating Methods: Combined Use of Surface Analytical Techniques for the Study of Manufacturing Process and Degradation Phenomena”), could help preserve priceless artistic and other treasures from the past.

The July 24, 2013 American Chemical Society PressPak release, which originated the news item, gives more detail,

Gabriel Maria Ingo and colleagues point out that scientists have made good progress in understanding the chemistry of many ancient artistic and other artifacts — crucial to preserve them for future generations. Big gaps in knowledge remained, however, about how gilders in the Dark Ages and other periods applied such lustrous, impressively uniform films of gold or silver to intricate objects. Ingo’s team set out to apply the newest analytical techniques to uncover the ancients’ artistic secrets.

They discovered that gold- and silversmiths 2,000 years ago developed a variety of techniques, including using mercury like a glue to apply thin films of metals to statues and other objects. Sometimes, the technology was used to apply real gold and silver. It also was used fraudulently, to make cheap metal statues that look like solid gold or silver. The scientists say that their findings confirm “the high level of competence reached by the artists and craftsmen of these ancient periods who produced objects of an artistic quality that could not be bettered in ancient times and has not yet been reached in modern ones.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the published paper,

Ancient Mercury-Based Plating Methods: Combined Use of Surface Analytical Techniques for the Study of Manufacturing Process and Degradation Phenomena by Gabriel Maria Ingo, Giuseppe Guida, Emma Angelini, Gabriella Di Carlo, Alessio Mezzi, and Giuseppina Padeletti. Acc. Chem. Res., Article ASAP DOI: 10.1021/ar300232e Publication Date (Web): July 5, 2013
Copyright © 2013 American Chemical Society

The paper is behind a paywall but you can access the abstract and this image, which was likely submitted by the researchers,

Image used to illustrate abstract (downloaded from http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ar300232e]

Image used to illustrate abstract (downloaded from http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ar300232e]