darkness blacker than black and darker than dark,

These combined features make it an ideal candidate for one day realizing a super black object.' 'Such a nanotube array not only reflects light weakly, but also absorbs light strongly. 'The loosely-packed forest of carbon nanotubes, which is full of nanoscale gaps and holes to collect and trap light, is what gives this material its unique properties,' Lin said. The end result was a material with a total reflective index of 0.045 percent - more than three times darker than the previous record, which used a film deposition of nickel-phosphorus alloy. Lin's team created a coating of low-density, vertically aligned carbon nanotube arrays that are engineered to have an extremely low index of refraction and the appropriate surface randomness, further reducing its reflectivity. The darkest manmade material, prior to the discovery by Lin's group, boasted a total reflectance of 0.16 percent to 0.18 percent. The total reflectance of conventional black paint, for example, is between 5 and 10 percent.

So far they have been unsuccessful in engineering a material with a total reflectance of zero. Scientists have long envisioned an ideal black material that absorbs all the colors of light while reflecting no light.

'The key to this discovery was finding how to create a long, extremely porous vertically-aligned carbon nanotube array with certain surface randomness, therefore minimizing reflection and maximizing absorption simultaneously.'Īll materials, from paper to water, air, or plastic, reflect some amount of light. 'It is a fascinating technology, and this discovery will allow us to increase the absorption efficiency of light as well as the overall radiation-to-electricity efficiency of solar energy conservation,' said Shawn-Yu Lin, professor of physics at Rensselaer and a member of the university's Future Chips Constellation, who led the research project.

Darkness blacker than black and darker than dark,