Ion Microbeam Analysis in cultural heritage: Application to lapis lazuli and ancient coins

Ion Beam Analyses (IBA) techniques, for example PIXE (Particle Induced X-ray Emission) and IL (IonoLuminescence), are a powerful analytical tool used to investigate the composition and structure of materials in cultural heritage. These techniques could be applied both in vacuum, preparing the sample as in electron microscopy, and in air in a non-invasive way allowing to analyse artworks of practically any shape and dimension without sample preparation. Moreover the use of a focused beam (microbeam) permits to reach an analysis resolution of few micrometers in vacuum and ten micrometers in air. In this work, instruments and methodologies are described and two examples of case study are reported: I) the mapping of elemental distribution in ancient roman coins; II) the trace elements measurement in lapis lazuli for provenance determination.