Art and Design Commons^™

Assessing The Protective Quality Of Wax Coatings On Bronze Sculptures Using Hydrogel Patches In Impedance Measurements, Alice H. England, Kathryn N. Hosbein, Capri A. Price, Morgan K. Wylder, Kenna S. Miller, Tami Lasseter Clare

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this work, we used chemically cross-linked acrylamide-based hydrogel patches that have been specifically developed for use as solid electrolytes in Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy to measure the impedance of two waxed bronze sculptures at the Seattle Art Museum’s (SAM) Olympic Sculpture Park (OSP) and compare those results to laboratory test panels. We determined that the impedance response in the frequency range in which measurements may be taken (10 kHz to 1 MHz) is mostly capacitive and that a freshly applied wax coating should ideally be less than 1 nF·cm⁻²for optimal protective performance.