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Materials

New route to lead-free porcelain designs discovered

Method inspired by traditional Japanese akae enameling

by Jyllian Kemsley
May 9, 2016 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 94, Issue 19

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Credit: ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces
Japanese researchers have figured out how to make high-quality, lead-free red akae enamel designs, such as the one on this dish.
Photo of a dish with a red enamel cherry blossom design.
Credit: ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces
Japanese researchers have figured out how to make high-quality, lead-free red akae enamel designs, such as the one on this dish.

Akae is a traditional Japanese enameling technique used to decorate porcelain. Historically, it involved combining leaded glass powder with iron(III) oxide in a water-based solution to yield a red paint. As porcelain makers have tried to switch to lead-free glass, however, they have had trouble producing high-quality akae samples. Experiments combining various particle sizes of glass and iron(III) oxide now seem to provide an optimal recipe that yields a glass particle core coated with an iron(III) oxide shell, reports a team led by Hideki Hashimoto of Kogakuin University. In contrast, the researchers find that preparing akae paint such that the iron oxide is isolated in spaces between glass particles results in a lower quality enamel (ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2016, DOI: 10.1021/acsami.6b01549). The group succeeded in preparing the core-shell material by combining 2-µm glass particles with 100-nm iron(III) oxide particles, but the details of the preparation method were key: They blended the particles with green tea solution in a mortar and let the mixture dry, repeating the process a total of three times. Because mortars and pestles are commonly used by porcelain artisans, the authors believe that the method should be easy to implement.

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