Artificial aging of monoazo and isoindoline yellow pigments

UV- and humidity-related aging effects on two yellow synthetic organic pigments, known for their good lightfastness, were investigated: Pigment Yellow 1 (PY 1, Monoazo) and Pigment Yellow 139 (PY 139, Isoindoline). The work considers the reactivity of these pigments, as individual pigments, in combination with linseed oil, and in presence of highly reactive inorganic white pigments: basic lead carbonate, titanium dioxide, and zinc oxide. Accelerated aging was induced via UV irradiation and high humidity rate in a custom-built chamber using both simple and bilayer paint mock-ups to simulate the technique of overlaying films in paintings. After aging, physicochemical variations were analysed using colorimetry, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and photoluminescence spectroscopy. The results show that the accelerated aging induces a greater colour change in monoazo yellow pigment than in isoindoline one when in powder form. Conversely, when oil is present in the samples as binder, the colour variations are similar for both samples suggesting that the large part of the chemical/physical changes occur in the organic binder. For the bilayer systems, photoluminescence spectroscopy suggests that the substrates can induce a larger drying activity on the binder and could follow the contribution of fluorescence in the variation of the perceived colour.