Royston Posted January 17, 2008 Share Posted January 17, 2008 The darkest material, made from carbon nanotubes has been made in a US lab...according to researchers it's 'the closest thing yet to the ideal black material, which absorbs light perfectly at all angles and over all wavelengths.' Please see the BBC article below... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7190107.stm From the article... An ideal black object absorbs all the colours of light and reflects none of them. In theory, it should be possible to make something that approaches the "perfect absorber." A team led by Dr Pulickel Ajayan, who is presently at Rice University in Houston, Texas, built an array of vertically aligned, low-density carbon nanotubes. Dr Shawn Lin measured the optical properties. The roughness of the material's surface was tuned to minimise its optical reflectance. Experiments showed that this "forest" of carbon nanotubes was very good at absorbing light, and very poor at reflecting it. Reporting their findings in the journal Nano Letters, Dr Ajayan, Dr Lin and colleagues say the reflectance of the material is three times lower than previously achieved. This makes it the "darkest man-made material ever." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilded Posted January 17, 2008 Share Posted January 17, 2008 Hmm interesting. I think it'll be a while until angsty teenagers can paint their rooms with carbon nanotubes though. :| Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thedarkshade Posted January 17, 2008 Share Posted January 17, 2008 I thought we were supposed to get rid of "dark" adjective with the advance of science! Interesting though... Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mag Posted January 18, 2008 Share Posted January 18, 2008 Yes, very interesting. I'd like to see them put a bunch together, so we can see it,. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chichickon Posted January 19, 2008 Share Posted January 19, 2008 just think what it would be like to have a door made out of that stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antimatter Posted March 23, 2008 Share Posted March 23, 2008 Do all of the carbon allotrope's have the same effect? Or is it just nanotubes? I thought we were supposed to get rid of "dark" adjective with the advance of science! What other word is there...? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cap'n Refsmmat Posted March 23, 2008 Share Posted March 23, 2008 Do all of the carbon allotrope's have the same effect?Or is it just nanotubes? Well, things like graphite aren't as dark as this particular material, so I presume not all allotropes do it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antimatter Posted March 23, 2008 Share Posted March 23, 2008 Well, things like graphite aren't as dark as this particular material, so I presume not all allotropes do it. Right, diamonds too. But what about buckyballs? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klaynos Posted March 23, 2008 Share Posted March 23, 2008 antimatter, I'd suggest you have a quick read about photonic crystals... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swansont Posted March 24, 2008 Share Posted March 24, 2008 The trick is having a lot of ways for light to get into the material and then bounce around and be absorbed. A stack of razor blades makes an excellent beam-dump for this very reason — the shallow angle means that scattering is forward, and there is little surface area presented to the beam. Of course, the perfect absorber is also a perfect radiator, so this isn't "black" in the IR, if it's near room temperature. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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