Researchers at the University of British Columbia leveraged an unusual discovery into ultra-black material made from wood. The deep, dark black is not the result of any sort of dye or surface coating; it’s structural change to the wood itself that causes it to swallow up at least 99% of incoming light.
The discovery was partially accidental, as researchers happened upon it while looking at using high-energy plasma etching to machine the surface of wood in order to improve it’s water resistance. In the process of doing so, they discovered that with the right process applied to the right thickness and orientation of wood grain, the plasma treatment resulted in a surprisingly dark end result. Fresh from the plasma chamber, a wood sample has a thin coating of white powder that, once removed, reveals an ultra-black surface.
The resulting material has been dubbed Nxylon (the name comes from mashing together Nyx, the Greek goddess of darkness, with xylon the Greek word for wood) and has been prototyped into watch faces and jewelry. It’s made from natural materials, the treatment doesn’t create or involve nasty waste, and it’s an economical process. For more information, check out UBC’s press release.
You have probably heard about Vantablack (and how you can’t buy any) and artist Stuart Semple’s ongoing efforts at making ever-darker and accessible black paint. Blacker than black has applications in optical instruments and is a compelling thing in the art world. It’s also very unusual to see an ultra-black anything that isn’t the result of a pigment or surface coating.
Nxylon is the new Black.
Seems like this is the same sort of structural black that vantablack is. Instead of carbon nanotubes to trap the light, it uses the existing structure of the wood endgrain to do so. That’s pretty cool, and should make it more accessible than vantablack.
I wonder how durable it is. The press release mentions that it’s still ultra black when coated with gold for electron microscopy. Perhaps coating with aluminum would still leave it ultra black on the front face, and then adhering it to a substrate would provide the necessary durability?
This was supposed to be it’s own comment, not a reply.
I would call it soot.
A few years ago there was a web craze around that vantablack stuff. It turns out that when you adjust the angles perfectly and have full control of lighting, it’s possible to make photographs that look amazing, but under most other circumstances it still reflects enough light to be able to different surfaces and shadows and such. It was hyped up much more then for what it was worth. But I do have to give them some credit. Things like that simply can’t be photographed properly, because everything depends on lighting conditions, and those are completely unknown to people who see the photographs.
If you really want to see black, then just close your eyes and put your handpalms in front of your eyes. You don’t see anything anymore. It’s truly amazing!
I’m now in full sun and still see a lot of red through my handpalms.
OMG you should file for refund!
For anyone who has not seen a car painted in Musou black. Here is a treat for you! Also check out the follow up video where they put pearl coat over the black.
https://youtu.be/xz_m_DlYz8E
I see all kinds of patterns and colours when I close my eyes and cover them with my hands?
Maybe cut down on the old hallucinogens?
Y’know, they’ve found those patterns painted in caves.
It’s either from pressing on your eyeballs or perhaps, as Acid Bob says maybe it’s the drugs.
or maybe from relaxation processes when the eyes go from “busy” to “idle” due to sudden darkness
It’s like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.
Yeah, it’s like turned up to 11.
Blacker than the blackest black . . . times infinity.
The answer is, plenty more. If it reflects any light at all, then it could be darker. Something that reflects 1% is a 20dB attenuator. Which is a lightweight, as attenuators go. Serious attenuators can do 100dB, which is 0.0000000001%. That’s a LOT of room for improvement.
It’s a Spinal Tap reference: https://youtu.be/zSkGtW-fQ3s
(and the Metallica one in reply, that I didn’t bother to find a link for)
Le veo un gran potencial en la recolección de energía solar térmica, solo tienes que teñir unos tubos llenos de algún fluido y exponemos al sol, y así capturar el calor que después puedes aprovechar en cualquier aplicación que necesite energía térmica para funcionar.
Lo veo como un gran caso de serendipia.
How much to get my front door done?
My front door faces East.
I REALLY don’t want The Sun shining on it during the Summer if it were blacker than Black!
(Although in the Winter, it could decrease my heating bills!)
” Nyx, the Greek goddess of darkness, with xylon”
I would have expected Nyxon. But either way Nxylon or Nyxon it doesn’t matter because for a long period spelling checkers and search engines all over the world will assume you’ve meant “Nylon”. Although, come to think of it, Nyxon sounds very much like some president with a dark history. Although history has thought us that things can always go darker. Which is actually a nice reference as well since the darkness here is “only” 99%.
Anyway, it’s not too late to change it, may I suggest “Nyxylon”, should be easier to say as well.
Although it just could have been a simple spelling error that everyone seems to copy. Does anyone remember the “kernal” and “kernel” story from Commodore? That started as a simple spelling error, but eventually ended up as the preferred way of spelling if, just for the joke of it / funny reference / honorary mention to the good old days.
It’s big, it’s heavy, it’s WOOD!
It’s better than bad, it’s GOOD!
Nice charcoal colour.
They really Blammo’d that to the dark ages.
does it come in a slightly darker black?
It’s like The Pit of Penultimate Darkness. They had to rename it after a slightly darker pit opened next door.
Wile E. Coyote could use this stuff to paint even darker tunnels on rock faces.
I saw a headline a couple of months ago that said something like:
Police are looking for person who painted a tunnel on bridge abutment.
B^)
I feel like every new research paper goes further and further back in time. There’s been a couple recently where scientists discovered (!!) that metals react with water to make hydrogen, and now we’ve got some geniuses reinventing charcoal. Why are we paying these people?
This stuff absorbs more that 99% of the light that strikes it – mere charcoal comes nowhere close to that. And read the article again and you’ll discover that this was discovered accidentally when researching ways to improve the water resistance of wood. Given that the latter is worth paying for, getting the former essentially free is well worth it,.
Given the cost of the alternatives (Vantablack costs about $42,000 per square foot, and Black 4.0 costs $361 per litre) the potential savings could be significant – well worth the cost of the research., even if that was in fact what they were trying to accomplish in the first place.
As with the other research you cited, improving an existing process to make it cheaper and easier to accomplish often results in turning a niche process into one with wide applicability. Well worth the pittance that is normally paid to university researchers.
Wood 2.0. Also a neat trick is that they can treat some wood with anhydrous ammonia and it gets really weird and black, but not ultra black like in this article. As for accessable paint? Black 4.0 isn’t much blacker than any other black matte tempra or acrylic that I’ve ever used. But it sure is more expensive. I painted
a Benchy, and have the remainder of a half pint still sitting in a cabinet. Stuart is probably making good money selling schwag paint, probably more than trying to be Banksy 4.0
i’m surprised to see so much negativity in here about the various ultrablack offerings, pointing out that they’re barely blacker than regular black. i mean, yeah.
i don’t care about the last percent. i got a cheap telescope (orion skyscanner 100, 4″ f/4 reflector), and the combination between its metal tube with just an apparent powder coat, and the extreme shortness of its tube meant just a ton of unwanted light was making its way into my perceived image. every time a car went by i would clearly see headlights scan across my view even though the car wasn’t even aimed at me. so i flocked the tube with regular craft store black felt and it was a huge immediate night and day difference. “most improved!” good enough for me.
but so what that tells me is that ultrablacks aren’t for me. yes, it’s fighting for the last tiny fraction, and yes it doesn’t achieve 100%. shrug
Well, the last percent is the hardest. Keep in mind that 1% black is ten times as bright as 0.1% black.
Note that I say 1% rather than 99%. That’s because I hate what happens when you invert a scale. Like, if you have something that’s half as reflective as 99% black, then is it 49.5% reflective? And no, I will never call something “twice as dark”, as long as we’re on the subject of nonsense units.
You got it flipped. 1% black and 0.1% black are both white of nearly equal brightness.
What you should have said is that its easier to compare 1% bright with 0.1% bright than to compare 99% black to 99.9% black.
Maybe I should have compared 1% white with 0.1% white?
“The first cut is the deepest”
-sung by Karen Carpenter, Rod Stewart, Gordon Lightfoot…
I wonder how durable it is
Isn’t there a traditional Japanese technique of charring certain woods used outdoors which is largely blackened and quite weatherized? Nothing new.
That’s charcoal. Which reflects about an order of magnitude more light. So this is new. Charcoal is grey, but appears darker because of the porous texture. Vanta black and black 4.0 have a more more porous texture. It’s like a dense Forest if very tall trees of carbon under the microscope. But those are expensive.
This technique creates a certain texture that makes the wood reflect even less light. Perhaps it’s simulatar to the texture of lotus leaves. That would explain it’s waterrepelling effect