A percolation context evidenced by thermostimulated currents in oil-resin art media

Degradation over time of home-made thixotropic oil/resin mixtures, similar to those used as natural media by the art painter J.M. William Turner (1775–1851) is investigated by using a combination of dielectric methods, i.e., low-frequency dielectric spectroscopy (LFDS) and the technique of thermostimulated currents (TSC). These address the direct conductivity (d.c.), i.e., the circulation of free charges, and the anelastic orientation of permanent dipoles, respectively. The oil/resin mixtures can be regarded as conducting/insulating-like composite systems with respect to the two conductivities. This provides the opportunity to follow selectively the behavior of the oil, at any composition. In fresh mixtures, LFDS measurements give evidence for three d.c. regimes, delimited by the critical resin-contents (R) R₁30% and R₂60%. This parallels observation with the naked eye of phase separation at R<40% and color change at R>R₂ in four-year-old naturally-aged samples. Such a stable composition-dependent context with two marked thresholds encourages a discussion of the time-behavior in terms of percolation, i.e., relative spatial organization of the parent substances, rather than by using a microscopic approach at the molecular scale. At R>R₁ the surveillance of the TSC signal indicates that the oil clusters tend to coalesce so as to form bigger clusters with aging. The coalescence process appears to be more efficient when the resin forms a continuum (R>R₂) than a dispersion (R<R₂). PACS 82B43