Study On Non-destructive Analysis Of Printing Colorants On Bills From The Late Qing Dynasty To The Republic Of China

The bill was produced when the commodity economy develops to a certain period, and which came into the development heyday from Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China. On the one hand, due to the invasion of the foreign capital and chaos national finance economic, a large number of bills were printed. At the same time, the west bank system flew into China, and unified bill system also began to form, making the bill printing more standardized. On the other hand, organic synthetic pigment sprung up gradually at the same period and was taken to China, existing in the printing colorants on Chinese recent bills together with inorganic pigment.The analytical investigation of printing colorants on bills in late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China can not only provide base materials for the historical study of the bill and printing colorants, but also contribute to the authentication of precious bills or even paper relics,. There are many destructive and non-destructive analytical methods of colorants on bills or other paper relics, such as Fourier Transform Infrared spectrum(FTIR), X-ray diffraction(XRD), Raman spectrum(RS), and X-ray fluorescence spectrum(XRF) and so on. And their advantages and shortcomings are discussed in this paper.Three-dimensional video microscopy, Micro-Raman spectrometer and scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive spectroscopy(SEM-EDS) are combined together to analyze bills from late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China non-destructively. The results shown that, the micromorphology of colorants on paper relics can be observed by Three-dimensional video microscopy; most structures of organic and inorganic pigments on relics can be confirmed by Micro-Raman spectrometer; the mapping analysis of SEM-EDS can show the distribution of all elements in the entire field. In addition, specific colorant can be deduced according to its characteristic element and it also can match up with the data of Raman spectrum. So, these three technologies above have broad application in non-destructive identification of paper-based relics.According to the analysis result of printing colorants on bills from the Late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, we know that organic synthetic pigment has been introduced and applied to China in the Late Qing Dynasty at least, which was used widely in the Republic of China and the bills in this period can reflect the era characteristics of the development of colorants at that time, which can provide experimental data for the identification, protection and restoration of paper-based relics and the study of related historical materials.