Short-pulse laser cleaning
for Australian heritage conservation
ARC Linkage project
The Laser Physics Centre undertakes research and
training at
the highest international level on a range of topics with a balance
between fundamental, strategic and applied laser-based research.
The research program spans many of the most exciting aspects of
contemporary laser physics and quantum electronics.
The goal of this project is to
develop a novel ultrafast pulse laser cleaning technology for removing
surface contamination from heritage artefacts in Australian
collections.
The use of lasers to clean artworks and heritage artefacts
is a well-established technique. Current heritage laser cleaning
systems, however, use relatively long nanosecond pulses which allow
heat and
shockwaves to move through layers of contamination to the surface of
the object
itself, causing irreparable damage.
Powerful ultrafast lasers, with pulse lengths of pico and
femtoseconds, can ablate material from a surface without heat
propagation into the bulk due to the nonlinear nature of the
laser-surface interaction. We aim to develop a laser cleaning technique that can
remove contaminating material from the surface layer-by-layer with
nanoscale precision in thicknesses, and which can
be halted once the underlying surface is reached.
News and Events:
The project is supported by a three year ARC Linkage
Project
Grant, which commenced in September 2006.
Chief investigators
Industry partner representatives
International collaboration
The group
is
also collaborating with Dr Philippe Delaporte link to his
page of the Laser Plasma and Photonic
Processes (LP3) Laboratory at the Mediterranean University in
Marseille, France. This
laboratory is experienced in using lasers for cleaning,
and in
developing systems to safely remove and capture material ablated by
laser.
Publications
Book
chapters:
A.
V. Rode, N. R. Madsen, E. G. Gamaly, B. Luther-Davies, K. G. H.
Baldwin, D. Hallam, A. Wain, J. Hughes, Ultrafast laser cleaning of
museum artefacts
in: Laser Cleaning II,
Ed. D. M. Kane (World Scientific, Singapore, 2006) pp 219-230.
Articles
A.
V. Rode, K. G. H. Baldwin, A. Wain, N. R. Madsen, D. Freeman, Ph.
Delaporte, and B. Luther-Davies, Ultrafast
Laser Ablation for
Restoration of Heritage Objects, accepted for publication
in Appl. Surf. Sci.
26 Oct 2007.
A.
V. Rode, D. Freeman, K. G. H.
Baldwin, A. Wain, O. Uteza,
Ph. Delaporte, Ultrafast pulse laser cleaning of paint:
Scanning the laser
beam, Applied Physics A (Submitted 10
Sept. 2007).
A.
V. Rode, K. G. H. Baldwin, A. Wain, and Ph. Delaporte, Ultrafast Lasers in
Restoration of Heritage Artefacts, AICCM Bulletin (Submitted
12 May 2007).
Conference proceedings:
LACONA VII poster
AICCM Conference paper
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