Pyrolysis/gas chromatography/mass spectrometry and Fourier‐transform infrared spectroscopy of amber

Abstract

Amber samples from archaeological objects belonging to the collection of the Museo Civico Archeologico of Bologna were analysed by pyrolysislgas chromatography/(ion-trap) mass spectrometry (PY/GC/MS) and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) to assess the geographic origin of the fossil resin. Both techniques showed potential in the study of amber, because they require small sample amounts, virtually no sample preparation and provide a fingerprint which is highly diagnostic of the material under investigation. Typical pyrograms, mass spectra and FTIR spectra are shown and compared to those obtained from standard amber of known geographical origin. The usefulness of composite mass spectra, namely mass spectra obtained by summing all or part of the mass spectra acquired within the pyrogram, to create a library of PYIGCIMS data and to compare samples is evaluated.

Examination of amber and related materials by NMR spectroscopy

“…In the early 1990s, Anderson and others devised a system for the classification of amber based on the chemical structures of the constituent molecules identified by means of pyrolysis GC and MS . Whereas the NMR method is phenomenological, as it is based on spectral patterns rather than molecular identification, the two approaches nonetheless led to the same set of categories.…”

Determination of the molecular weight between cross‐links for different ambers: Viscoelastic measurements of the rubbery plateau*

“…Due to the wide-ranging interest in amber, it is important to study its structure and chemical properties, and various characterization methods have been applied to do such analyses. Conventional chemical analysis methods, such as mass spectrometry, [31] infrared spectroscopy, [32][33][34][35] X-ray, [36,37] NMR, [14] and pyrolysis-gas chromatographymass spectrometry, [32,38,39] have been widely used in determination of the composition and molecular structure of ambers from different times and locations. Other thermal analysis methods like thermogravimetry [40] and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) [41] have also been used to study the ambers.…”

Distinguishing Amber and Copal Classes by Proton Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy

“…NMR (Lambert et al . 1994), MS (Galletti and Mazzeo 1993; Regert et al . 2008) and other techniques (Angelini and Bellintani 2005; Peñalver et al .…”