Transmission Neutron Scattering for Bragg Edge Analysis on bronze and Cu-based materials

Historical metallurgy, and in particular bronze and other copper alloy metallurgy, represents a research topic of strong importance in the study of artistic and technological evolution of different civilizations. Archaeometallurgy studies are generally carried out by means of destructive analytics, such as metallography and scanning electron microscope analysis on cross sections, while neutron research based activity is usually limited to specific topics or seen as a mysterious still unknown method by the scholars acting in this field. Since heritage science aims at preserving cultural artefacts and neutron methods have the potential of being the best non-destructive option for investigating bronze artefacts non-destructively, we proposed a project aiming to develop and calibrate, in a quantitative way, non-invasive techniques based on neutron absorption and scattering for analysis of historical and archaeological copper alloy artefacts. CHNet_BRONZE will address and combine three powerful bulk analysis methods: ToF-ND, BENT and NRTI measurements on different powders of high-purity copper, lead and calibrated mixtures of them, for optimizing the elemental, phase and microstructural calibration of the parameters obtained by the three measuring techniques, to exploit such refinement for the interpretation of the data collected (at present and in the future) on historical samples. This proposal is relative to BENT.

历史冶金学，尤其是青铜及其他铜合金冶金学，在探究不同文明的艺术与技术演进方面具有重要研究价值。考古冶金学（Archaeometallurgy）研究通常采用破坏性分析方法，例如金相学分析及对横截面的扫描电子显微镜分析；而基于中子的研究则往往局限于特定课题，或被该领域学者视为一种神秘且尚未完全了解的方法。由于遗产科学（Heritage Science）旨在保护文化遗产，而中子方法有望成为无损研究青铜文物的最佳选择，因此我们提出一项课题，旨在以定量方式开发并校准基于中子吸收与散射的无创技术（non-invasive techniques），用于分析历史及考古铜合金文物。CHNet_BRONZE课题将聚焦并整合三种强大的体分析方法（bulk analysis methods）：对高纯度铜、铅的不同粉末及其校准混合物进行ToF-ND、BENT及NRTI测量，以优化这三种测量技术所得参数的元素、物相及微观结构校准，进而利用这些优化结果解读当前及未来历史样本的采集数据。本提案与BENT相关。