Gels for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage

Gels are becoming one of the most important tools for the conservation of cultural heritage. They are very versatile systems and can be easily adapted to the cleaning and consolidation of works of art. This article deal with the major achievements reached in the field with 'soft" and "hard" gels. The article deals with the interesting property called "responsivity" of the gels by chemical, rheological and magnetic switch. The gelators used were poly(ethylene)imine in the presence of CO2, poly(vinyl)alcohol cross-linked with borate anions, and [poly(nipaam)] grafted chains (nipaam corresponds to N-isopropylacrylamide). The article suggests possible future developments.