The preservation of Cultural Heritage is undoubtedly important for the society, and Conservation Science must dedicate itself to attempts to minimize the inherent processes of degradation to which cultural assets are susceptible. In this context, the evaluation of the chemical aspects of the composition of the objects and their relation with the environment where they are located are essential for the understanding of the decay signs observed, supporting the establishment of effective conservation strategies. These characteristics are demonstrated here by vibrational spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and microbiological analysis of efflorescences observed in two types of paintings: a tempera on canvas painting ("Barco com bandeirinhas e pássaros", Alfredo Volpi, 1955) and an oil mural painting of the Throne Room of the National Palace of Mafra (18th-19th century, Mafra, Portugal). The challenges involved in the investigation of the efflorescences are demonstrated in both cases, suggesting the occurrence of degradation processes of different origins: in Alfredo Volpi's tempera on canvas painting, the migration of substances from the preparation layer to the surface of the pictorial layer and microbiological colonization; and in the mural painting the migration of calcium salts from the constituent materials of plaster and of neoformation, besides associated microbiological colonization.

The understanding of chemical and physical behavior of materials, especially metals and their alloys, is of utmost importance for industrial and technological applications, development of new materials and preservation of cultural heritage. The use of complementary analytical techniques has allowed a better understanding of corrosion mechanisms, and results obtained by Raman micro-spectroscopy, for example, have been complemented by FTIR and XRD. When focusing on the development of new materials and proposition of preservation strategies, the understanding of corrosion processes and of their very initial steps (nanometric scale) is fundamental. SERS reaches such lateral resolution if TERS is used, however, it cannot be universally applied and needs to be complemented by other techniques. In this work it is presented the potentials of a recent installed technique at the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory (LNLS), which can be used for nano-speciation of corrosion products, complementing investigation carried out by, for example, Raman micro-spectroscopy and TERS. It is Synchrotron Infrared Nano-Spectroscopy (SINS), which allows the investigation of both chemical nature and physical distribution of corrosion products. The infrastructure presented at LNLS is one of the few available in the world. As a model system, thin films of Pb exposed to formic acid were used.

A few years ago, during a storage room clean out at the University of São Paulo (Biblioteca do Conjunto das Químicas), several items were discarded, including apparently modern worthless large-scale reproductions of paintings by famous painters. A member of staff retrieved these reproductions from the litter bin, one of which was carefully inspected and non-destructively analyzed by spectroscopic techniques (Raman and XRF). The results showed that instead of being a modern reproduction of the gouache "Clinique de Sannois" (Maurice Utrillo, 1923), it was hand-painted probably between the late 1940s and early 1950s using the Jacomet process. This technique was developed by the French printer Daniel Jacomet in the 1920s, who made authorized reproductions of works of art by some of the most celebrated painters of the time.

Esculturas policromadas de Pb do Museu do Oratório em Ouro Preto (Minas Gerais, Brasil), expostas em um mostruário de vidro foram severamente degradadas. Os produtos de corrosão foram analisados por difratometria de raios X (XRD), espectroscopia no infravermelho com transformada de Fourier (FTIR), microscopia eletrônica de varredura (SEM), fluorescência de raios X por dispersão de energia (EDX) e microscopia Raman, e constatou-se a formação majoritária de carbonatos e formiatos de Pb. Embora carbonatos sejam comuns na corrosão atmosférica de Pb, formiatos podem ser formados tanto pela ação de ácido fórmico quanto de formaldeído, sendo sua origem um ponto importante a ser investigado. Simulações ambientais com tiras de Pb expostas a possíveis fontes desses compostos orgânicos voláteis possibilitaram concluir que o processo de degradação foi causado principalmente pelo processo de cura da tinta utilizada na base do mostruário. Contudo, produtos de limpeza, que podem conter formaldeído como conservante, mostraram-se potencialmente capazes de causar danos a objetos de chumbo, acelerando sua corrosão.

Polychrome lead sculptures from Oratory Museum in Ouro Preto (Minas Gerais, Brazil) kept inside a glass showcase were severely degraded. The formed corrosion products were analyzed by X-ray diffractometry (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDX) and Raman microscopy and proved to be mostly Pb carbonates and formates. Although carbonate is a very common finding in Pb atmospheric corrosion, Pb formates can be formed by the action of formic acid or formaldehyde, being their origin a key point to be investigated. Environmental simulations with Pb coupons exposed to possible sources of these volatile organic compounds led to the conclusion that the degradation process was caused mainly by the curing process of the painted showcase baseplate. However, cleaning products, which can also contain formaldehyde as preservative, proved to be potentially harmful to Pb, accelerating its corrosion.