Article Scientists made a car paint so black it looks like a hole in reality

[C C]

https://gizmodo.com/scientists-made-a-ca...2000773588

INTRO: Vantablack inspires awe and disquiet. When BMW used this “blackest black” paint on one of its 2019 concept cars, the BMW X6, the German automaker noted that any surface coated in this carbon nanotube-based emulsion “loses its defining features to the human eye, with objects appearing two-dimensional.” The result, BMW added, “can be interpreted by the brain as staring into a hole or even a void.”

Vantablack never made it onto a commercial BMW vehicle, becoming instead a glare-reduction coating proposed for satellites and spookier applications, like stealth submarines. But that hasn’t deterred Singapore-based coatings developer Nipsea Group, whose R&D wing has now announced a more resilient blacker-than-black paint that it hopes will meet China’s burgeoning demand for deep-black luxury vehicles. Nipsea’s Vantablack-inspired composite, the researchers said, has proven capable of absorbing an average of 99.9% of all visible light wavelengths.

This new “ultra-black coating,” as the team wrote in its new paper for the journal Matter & Light, also remained “notably stable” even after humidity and water resistance tests—qualifying it for “application as ultra-black automotive coating.”

“In China, car color has become a key selling point,” Nipsea research chemist Zhiwei Liu said in a statement. “Deep black finishes have long been the premium choice and signature color for luxury cars due to their elegant appearance, powerful visual impact, and luxurious undertone.” (MORE - details)

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[C C]

Paint it black(er): A new way to make cars darker than ever
https://www.cell.com/matter-light/fullte...26)00015-3

PRESS RELEASE: Scientists have developed a practical way to make ultra-black coatings fit to meet the demand for trendy, luxury vehicles in China. The coating, described in a paper publishing June 18 in the Cell Press journal Matter & Light, is made up of a composite of carbon black pigment and carbon nanotubes. The resulting color is a deep jet black that also meets automotive standards, opening the door for car manufacturers to develop distinguished, high-end models in darker-than-ever hues.

“In China, car color has become a key selling point,” says author Zhiwei Liu, a research chemist with the Color Technology, Group Core R&D Shanghai, Nipsea Group. “Deep black finishes have long been the premium choice and signature color for luxury cars due to their elegant appearance, powerful visual impact, and luxurious undertone. As a result, automotive coating companies have been actively pursuing innovations in color technology to develop mass-processable ultra-black coating solutions with extreme blackness.”

In 2019, a BMW concept car with a vertically aligned carbon nanotube (VACNT) array coating set off a race in the automotive industry to develop coatings that similarly absorb almost all light, creating a “black hole” effect that gives vehicles a pronounced, dark appearance. The industry has been on the hunt for more practical ways to achieve this ultra-black effect with automotive coating-grade properties.

Liu’s team developed a stable, nano-sized carbon black pigment-carbon nanotube composite, which they incorporated into a coating binder and sprayed onto a car model as an automotive coating.

While current approaches to making black coatings rely on carbon black dispersions alone to absorb intrinsic light, imposing a limit on how black the coating can be, the team’s new approach uses “structural absorption,” pushing the material’s light absorption efficiency to new levels and enabling it to absorb an average of 99.90% of visible light wavelengths. The film also showed excellent long-term stability even when the researchers exposed it to water and humidity tests, pointing to its value for industrial applications.

“With the rapid development of dispersing technology and equipment, there is still room for improvements in practical processability of carbon-nanotube-containing nanomaterials,” says Liu.

Making the coating with a higher proportion of carbon nanotubes can further increase its capacity to absorb light, he added, although this would also bring difficulties in industrial-grade processability. In the future, he said, the researchers may also develop an ultra-black coating that contains multiple layers, with a gradient refractive index that reduces interface reflection and further enhances light absorption efficiency for an even darker look.

While the researchers have completed the technical proof-of-concept design for the coating’s manufacturing process, it may still be a while before ultra-black cars made with this film will be able to hit the road.

“Further efforts will focus on the verification of coating application window and the comprehensive film performance validations of carbon black pigment-carbon nanotubule composite-based ultra-black automotive coating,” says Liu.

[Yazata]

[Image: 4-Side-profile_Surrey-Nanosystems-300x400.jpg]

[confused2]

Call me over-cautious if you like but .. a car that you can't really see where it is .. is that a good idea?

[Magical Realist]

I wear black all the time, even in summer. I need a shirt and a ballcap that color.

[Syne]

Vantablack would be even more slimming.