Scientists Developed an Ultra-Black Car Paint That Absorbs 99.9% of Light and Looks Like a Hole in Reality
· Vice
If you’re in the market for a new kind of black paint that makes everything you coat it in look like an inky void from the great beyond that has punctured a hole in our reality and threatens to suck in all life as we know it, a paint company from China may have exactly what you’re looking for.
According to a new study published in Matter & Light, researchers at Nipsea Group’s R&D division, working under Nippon Paint in China, have developed an ultra-black car paint that absorbs more than 99.9% of visible light. That’s exactly what your car has always needed, obviously.
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To put that into perspective, ordinary black car paint tops out at around 99.8% light absorption. That .1 percent sounds like nothing to be too concerned about, but apparently it makes all the difference. You probably have to see it in person to truly appreciate it, though it is noticeable in pictures.
A New Ultra-Black Paint Absorbs 99.9% of Light and Makes Cars Look Two-Dimensional
Services coated with extremely black materials can lose their curves and contours, making a 3D object look oddly flat and formless. More like a silhouette of a thing than the actual thing. You may have heard of Vantablack in recent years. It’s an extremely black nanomaterial that can absorb up to 99.965 percent of visible light.
A few years ago, BMW painted an entire car with it and, yeah, it sure was black! It looks like someone took a photo of a 2020 BMW X6 and cut out all the parts that paint would normally cover, leaving only the windows, tires, grille, and headlights.
It’s eerie enough to see a car that doesn’t reflect light, and now, thanks to Nippon Paint, there is a black paint that’s almost as black as Vantablack, but it’s much easier to apply and manage.
Vantablack is made of carbon nanotubes, which are expensive and difficult to manufacture. They’re also not durable, and hard to apply and maintain. But Nippon Paint aims to solve that problem by combining those carbon nanotubes with traditional carbon black pigment. To get the two to mix, the researchers used a special milling process that forces the particles of both substances to arrange themselves into what’s been described as a “connecting-the-dots” texture that traps light by making it bounce around across the paint’s ever-so-slightly bumpy surface.
The result is an extremely black black that can be applied with conventional automotive spray equipment. Test panels proved durable enough to withstand prolonged exposure to humidity, water immersion, and heat without any visible defects or adhesion issues.
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