Mauro Missori awarded a CNR/CACH Bilateral Agreement

Mauro Missori awarded a CNR Bilateral Agreement with the Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage (CACH) with the project “Nanoscale degradation indexes of ancient Chinese and Italian papers for conservation & restoration applications”.

The aim of this joint research project is to develop degradation indexes of ancient Chinese and Italian papers for restoration applications. These activities require the use of specific physical and chemical diagnostics technique at the nanoscale suitable for the cellulose-based materials and, in general, for natural polymeric fibers. In this contest, the Italian and Chinese units have great experience.

Physical and chemical experimental methods as well as ab-initio theoretical simulations are planned to be used by the Italian and Chinese groups. These will allow detecting and quantifying the development of chemical impurities induces by the degradation of the polymeric units of natural fibers used for paper making as well as their structural modification as a function of ageing. The results will be used to build a map of degradation indexes of paper from nanoscale phenomena as a reference for the selection of restoration procedures and materials for Chinese and Italian relics.

Beside ISC and CACH, the project will also benefit from the collaboration of the Department of Chemical Sciences and Technologies of the “Tor Vergata” University in Rome and from the Department for History of Science and Scientific Archaeology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei.