Industrial Liaison Office
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The Technological Offering
Synchrotron light has unique characteristics of intensity and coherence that can reveal otherwise inaccessible details of materials, simplify their manipulation and provide information in multiple fields of study including electronics, environmental sciences, materials engineering, medicine, and micro and nanotechnologies. The light is generated by electron accelerators, carried through micrometrically collimated beams selected according to their wavelengths, and transmitted through a beamline to the utilisation and measurement stations.
In this section a number of studies and developments undertaken at the Elettra in recent years are decribed. You'll find many examples of the wide range of the services. The Industrial Liaison Office of Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A. promotes technology transfer and offers assistance to all who wish to take advantage of its sophisticated skills and equipment.
Services
Conservation of the Cultural heritage
Medieval glassware
At the Elettra laboratory, phase contrast microtomography based on synchrotron light has been employed to examine the coating applied on corroded medieval glassware objects to protect them from environmental influences.
Pompeii inks
Small ink traces found on the sides of a recently discovered inkpot in Pompeii have been examined at Elettra by means of ATR (Attenuated Total Reflection) microspectroscopy in order to determine their composition.
Restoration of frescoes
The non-destructive nature of microtomography allows detailed examination of the structure of a plaster specimen painted with frescoes at various phases of the restoration and conservation process, with no effect upon its chemical and physical properties.
Roman ship hulls
Submersed wooden naval discoveries from the Roman era have been analysed at Elettra with the use of non-destructive imaging techniques to monitor the effectiveness of treatment with polyethylene glycol used for reinforcing the deteriorated cell walls and replacing residual water with a suitable substitute.
Invisible marking of antique coinage
Elettra has developed a technique that allows antique coins to be catalogued by means of fluorescent mark stamped upon a strip of special material tens of nanometres thick and visible only under ultraviolet light.
