TY - JOUR A1 - Kautek, Wolfgang A1 - Pentzien, Simone A1 - Rudolph, Pascale A1 - Krüger, Jörg A1 - König, E. T1 - Laser interaction with coated collagen und cellulose fibre composites: fundamentals of laser cleaning of ancient parchment manuscripts and paper N2 - Laser cleaning of delicate biological composite materials such as ancient parchment manuscripts from the 15th and 16th century and printed paper from the 19th century is demonstrated with an ultraviolet excimer pulsed laser at 308 nm. Laser fluence levels must stay below the ablation and destruction threshold of the parchment or paper substrate, and have to surpass the threshold of the contaminant matter. Foreign layers to be removed must exhibit a higher optical density than the artifact substrates. Synthetic carbonaceous dirt modelled by water-soluble black crayons showed a characteristically weak featureless laser-induced plasma spectroscopy spectrum near the noise limit. It turned out that laser-induced plasma spectroscopy is of limited use in monitoring halting points (or etch-stops) because it relies on the destruction not only of the laterally inhomogenously distributed contaminant but also of pigment phases on a microscopically rough parchment substrate. Laser-induced fluorescence spectroscopy, however, promises to be a valuable non-destructive testing technique for etch-stop monitoring. KW - Laser KW - Parchment KW - Papery KW - Spectroscopy KW - Laser cleaning PY - 1998 SN - 0169-4332 SN - 1873-5584 VL - 127-129 SP - 746 EP - 754 PB - North-Holland CY - Amsterdam AN - OPUS4-11516 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -