Very modern and very black pigment
Composition and Properties of Vantablack
Vantablack is a pigment coating developed in 2014 by the British companySurrey Nanosystems. The name is an acronym forVerticallyAlignedNanoTubeArrayBlack.Materials coated with this pigment absorb 99,965% of the incident light which made it the blackest known pigment at the time of its discovery.The chemical stability and lightfastness of this pigment are exceedingly high. The coated material has to be protected from touching and other possibilities of abrasion.
The material is coated by an array of nanotubes made of pure carbon which arevertically aligned and more or less regularly spaced on the surface. The pattern of the nanotubes is not unlike an array of trees in a forest. The lightfalling on the coated materialenters the space between the nanotubes and is then repeatedly reflected off the nanotubes until it is absorbed.
Diagram showing the types of carbon nanotubes
Diagramm created by Michael Ströck
Coated surface
Coating on aluminum foil
Coated bust
Video: 'The World's Blackest Material' by Surrey Nanosystems
Video: 'Big Wrinkles' by Surrey Nanosystems
The scientists at MIT have since produced another materialnot yet named absorbing 99,995% of incident light and which is 10 times blacker than Vantablack
Video: 'The Surprising Origin Of A Color Darker Than Vantablack' by Science Insider
Word Origin
The name was given by the British companySurrey Nanosystems which first produced the coating in 2014.The name is an acronym forVerticallyAlignedNanoTubeArrayBlack.
Preparation
The vantablackcoatings can only be applied in a special reactor at high temperatures. The recently developed alternative called S-VIS can be sprayed onto surfaces using a special apparatus.
Application of S-VIS.
Image bySurrey Nanosystems
History of Use
Vantablack is commercially available as a service from Surrey NanoSystems since 2014. In 2016 the artistAnish Kapoormade a deal with Surrey NanoSystems and obtained exclusive rights for the use of this pigment.One of the first applications by Anish Kapoor was the coating of his large sculptureCloud Gate(2006) in Chicago.
Examples of use
Video: 'Asif Khan reveals super-dark Vantablack pavilion for Winter Olympics 2018'
Identification
Visible and IR spectra
Further Reading
References
(1)Jackson, Jeremy J.; Puretzky, Alex A.; More, Karren L.; Rouleau, Christopher M.; Eres, Gyula; Geohegan, David B. (3 Dec 2010).“Pulsed Growth of Vertically Aligned Nanotube Arrays with Variable Density”.Nano.American Chemical Society(ACS): 7573–7581.doi:10.1021/nn102029y
S. Muntwyler, J. Lipscher, HP. Schneider, Das Farbenbuch, 2nd. Ed., 2023, alataverlag Elsau, pp. 122 and 462-65.
