Just when you thought black couldn’t get any darker, British engineering from Surrey NanoSystems have declared the latest (and blackest) version of what’s described as the “world’s darkest material,” which is called Vantablack. Created through a low-temperature carbon nanotube growth process, Vanta is short for Vertically Aligned Carbon Nanotube Alloys, and the principle here resembles sound-dampening rooms with foam spikes sticking out of walls and ceilings.
Surrey says the new material “is revolutionary in its ability to be applied to light-weight, temperature-sensitive structures such as aluminium whilst absorbing 99.96% of incident radiation, believed to be the highest-ever recorded.” This includes visible light and other common frequencies like microwaves and radio waves, meaning your eyes essentially can’t see it — you can only see the space around it, and then infer that there must be something occupying that eerie abyss. The result is a black so dark that it’s more like a bottomless pit, or a black hole from which no light can emerge.
It took two years of development and testing to achieve success in getting this material.
“We are now scaling up production to meet the requirements of our first customers in the defence and space sectors, and have already delivered our first orders. Our strategy includes both the provision of a sub-contract coating service from our own UK facility, and the formation of technology transfer agreements with various international partners”, said Ben Jensen, Surrey Nanosystems’ chief technology officer.
According to the Independent, Jensen explains what Vantablack does to crumpled aluminium foil: “You expect to see the hills and all you can see… it’s like black, like a hole, like there’s nothing there. It just looks so strange.”
“We grow the tubes like a field of carbon grass. The tubes are spaced apart. When a light particle hits the material, it gets between the tubes and bounces around, is absorbed and converted to heat. Light goes in, but it can’t get back out.”
There is a little more technical information about Vantablack available in an Optics Express research paper, which focuses on the material’s qualification for use in aerospace and for military purposes.
Vantablack could have applications in astronomical cameras, telescopes, and infrared scanning systems. As Jensen said, “it reduces stray-light, improving the ability of sensitive telescopes to see the faintest stars.”
Jensen is already working on an even blacker version of Vantablack, which would make a difference that none of us could ever notice with our naked eyes.
