Thermal Analysis on Nanocomposite treated Historical leather

The main unit of leather structure is collagen, a group of α- helix thread proteins. Thermal analysis methods are useful to study the strength of biological macromolecules (collagen)[1-4]. Thermal analysis gives the opportunity to follow every change within the structure (e.g. protein denaturation andaccumulation, gel-sol changes, glass transition, etc.). In DSC analysis with increasing heat, two main phenomena can beoccurred in leather related to dehydration and proteindecomposition. Then two groups of samples are prepared. The first one named control sample (i.e. untreated) and the secondgroup, belong to the treated leathers with a suspension of hydroxy apatite (HA) nanoparticles and polyethylene glycol400 (PEG400). Then the treatment effects on historical leather were studied by differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) andthermo gravimetric analysis (TGA).