Preliminary Applications of the Surrey External Beam Facility

The new external microbeam at the University of Surrey is capable of mapping areas of 3mm x3 mm. In this study it has been used to map the metal composition of 2 inks in a German 1920’s bank note. The major constituents of the red ink are mercury and barium, while those in the green ink, which was applied first, are lead and chromium. The analysis took 10 minutes and there was no detectable mark left on the paper as a result of the analysis. RBS and PIXE analysis of lines drawn on cartridge paper using a lead metalpoint enabled the fine structure and the depth distribution of lead in the paper to be determined.