The investigation of dye aging dynamics in writing inks using Raman spectroscopy

• The Raman studies of natural and artificial ink aging process were performed.
• The dye degradation model was proposed.
• The age of the paper documents up to 15 years can be estimated.

The durability against light and aging dynamics of heteroatomic aromatic dyes and pigments containing nitrogen atoms used in writing inks was studied using Raman spectroscopy. The mechanisms of their thermal and photo-decomposition were proposed and the rates of these processes were determined. According to Raman spectroscopy, it was found that depending on the presence of one or another colorant, there are three main types (Type A, Type B and Type C) of blue dye inks used in ballpoint, gel and capillary pens which were studied in this work. Each type is characterized by a certain set of signals in Raman spectra. Time dependencies of Raman signal intensities for each type revealed the dynamics of the processes occurred with colorants included in the studied inks from the moment when they were printed on paper. Thus, the results obtained in this study can be used for the age estimation of the paper documents up to 15 years.

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