May 29th , Pablo Barreiro Castro, researcher of the New Materials Group at the University of Vigo and member of the Lasering team, defended his doctoral dissertation entiled “Aplicación de técnicas láser en la conservación y restauración de yacimientos arqueológicos”. It was supervised by Dr. Pío Manuel González Fernández and Dr. José Santiago Pozo Antonio, under the interuniversity PhD program on “Applied Physics”.
This doctoral dissertation addresses a first approach to studying the cleaning of biological colonization (biofilms and lichenic crusts) developed on granite and schists through the application of different types of laser. One of them was a Nd:YAG operating at 1064 (infra-red region of the electromagnetic spectrum), 532 (green region), 355 (ultra-violet region) and 266 (ultra-violet region) nm and the second one was an Er:YAG operating at 2940 nm (infra-red region). The selection of these lasers was based on in order to study how certain parameters of a laser (wavelength and pulse duration) influence in the cleaning of archaeological sites, comparing this method to the traditional methods (mechanical or physical). Raman spectroscopy was selected as a main analytical technique for the characterization of the cleaning.
Congratulations to the new doctor!
