http://www.theverge.com/
Black may not be, it
turns out, the darkest shade — at least not black as we know it. British
tech company Surrey Nanosystems says it's developed the world's
blackest material: made of carbon nanotubes, it can absorb 99.96 percent
of light that hits it. Its developers say that to the human eye, the
material — called Vantablack — completely erases any features on a
surface, becoming simply a void. "It's like black, like a hole, like
there's nothing there. It just looks so strange," chief technical
officer Ben Jensen tells The Independent.
That's because the dense coating of carbon nanotubes, rolled sheets of
carbon atoms like the one seen above, are used to create a lattice that
absorbs virtually all light as it's refracted around the tubes.
(Surrey Nanosystems / The Independent)
Super-black carbon nanotube
coatings are used in telescopes and other instruments that need to
operate without any kind of noise from reflected light. Back in 2010, NASA announced
that it was assessing whether its own carbon nanotubes should be used
to coat the Ocean Radiometer for Carbon Assessment, which measured ocean
color and had to be covered in black paint to prevent contaminating the
results. The explanatory video below introduces the concepts that
underlie it and Surrey Nanosystems' technology.
Besides the color, one of the
most important issues is how well the material can stick to the objects
it's trying to blacken, and how versatile it is. Surrey Nanosystems says
this is one of the major differences between Vantablack and similar
coatings: unlike many others, which have to be heated at several hundred
degrees Celsius, it can be applied at low temperatures. This makes it
possible to use the nanotubes on objects that might melt with a
traditional process. The company is also claiming that it's set a new
record for light absorption. To people looking at the coating, though,
it might not be a completely new experience. NASA's super-black surfaces
absorbed 99.5 percent of light, and in 2011, researchers used nanotubes to make an object virtually invisible against a black background.
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