Researchers report blackest black yet made
Jan. 23, 2008
World Science staff
In the movie This is Spinal Tap, a less-than-cerebral rock guitarist, upon viewing a record-album cover designed as solid black, delivers an impromptu speech. “It’s like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none,” he proclaims. “None more black.”
His inarticulateness is matched, sadly, by an ignorance of physics. You can get much blacker than black cardboard, which reflects a good deal of light whereas true black reflects none.
Finding an absolutely black object on Earth, though, is as likely as encountering the rock group of that 1982 film. Both are only fictions.
On the other hand, researchers now say they have created the darkest material ever made by man. The material, a thin carbon coating, reflects less than 0.1 percent of incoming light. It absorbs the rest.
It could one day serve to boost the effectiveness and efficiency of solar energy technology, infrared sensors, and other devices, said the researchers, who have applied for a Guinness World Record.
“This discovery will allow us to increase the absorption efficiency of light as well as the overall radiation-to-electricity efficiency of solar energy conservation,” said Shawn-Yu Lin, a physicist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., who led the research.
The key was to create a carpet of carbon nanotubes, structures not much thicker than an atom, he said. It also required building in a bit of “surface randomness,” he added which served to minimize reflection.
All materials reflect some light. Ordinary black paint reflects 5 to 10 percent. The darkest manmade material, prior to the Lin group’s discovery, reflected just under a fifth of a percent, Lin said. The new material has a total reflective index of less than a twentieth of a percent—in total, 0.045 percent, he said.
Its unique properties are due to “the loosely-packed forest of carbon nanotubes, which is full of nanoscale [roughly atomic-sized] gaps and holes to collect and trap light,” Lin said. “Such a nanotube array not only reflects light weakly, but also absorbs light strongly. These combined features make it an ideal candidate for one day realizing a super-black object.”
Researchers report blackest black yet made
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question is... can i get a layer of this on my car?
more on the story:
Scientists Invent Blackest Black
Deep, dark finding is blackest black | The Journal Gazette
Jan. 23, 2008
World Science staff
In the movie This is Spinal Tap, a less-than-cerebral rock guitarist, upon viewing a record-album cover designed as solid black, delivers an impromptu speech. “It’s like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none,” he proclaims. “None more black.”
His inarticulateness is matched, sadly, by an ignorance of physics. You can get much blacker than black cardboard, which reflects a good deal of light whereas true black reflects none.
Finding an absolutely black object on Earth, though, is as likely as encountering the rock group of that 1982 film. Both are only fictions.
On the other hand, researchers now say they have created the darkest material ever made by man. The material, a thin carbon coating, reflects less than 0.1 percent of incoming light. It absorbs the rest.
It could one day serve to boost the effectiveness and efficiency of solar energy technology, infrared sensors, and other devices, said the researchers, who have applied for a Guinness World Record.
“This discovery will allow us to increase the absorption efficiency of light as well as the overall radiation-to-electricity efficiency of solar energy conservation,” said Shawn-Yu Lin, a physicist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., who led the research.
The key was to create a carpet of carbon nanotubes, structures not much thicker than an atom, he said. It also required building in a bit of “surface randomness,” he added which served to minimize reflection.
All materials reflect some light. Ordinary black paint reflects 5 to 10 percent. The darkest manmade material, prior to the Lin group’s discovery, reflected just under a fifth of a percent, Lin said. The new material has a total reflective index of less than a twentieth of a percent—in total, 0.045 percent, he said.
Its unique properties are due to “the loosely-packed forest of carbon nanotubes, which is full of nanoscale [roughly atomic-sized] gaps and holes to collect and trap light,” Lin said. “Such a nanotube array not only reflects light weakly, but also absorbs light strongly. These combined features make it an ideal candidate for one day realizing a super-black object.”
Researchers report blackest black yet made
-----
question is... can i get a layer of this on my car?
more on the story:
Scientists Invent Blackest Black
Deep, dark finding is blackest black | The Journal Gazette
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