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A Few Things You Should Know About the "Darkest Material Ever Made"

A brief look at the science behind Anish Kapoor's new signature color Vantablack

By Allison Fonder - March 4, 2016

in Materials | Fine Art

The color Vantablack has recently taken the world by storm after artist Anish Kapoor announced that he has acquired exclusive rights to the use of this color. According to sources and scientists, it is the blackest substance known to man and absorbs as much as 99.6% of light.

Kapoor's trippy application of Vantablack

As questions swirl around about the ethical implications of someone owning such a material, I wanted to dig a little bit more into the details of this fascinating pigment discovery.

First off: how is Vantablack made and why is it ?

As you probably know, pigments originally came from a large variety of organic sources. For example, blue often derives from lapis rock while the oldest source of bright green pigment is malachite, which is found in copper ore deposits.

Lapis lazuli rock, an organic pigment source.

Vantablack on the other hand is grown in labs and is actually made from carbon nanotubes—yes, tubes. This "forest" of highly condensed tubes, grown on the surface of aluminum, is what causes the dark pigment as well as helping to explain exactly why it is so dark.

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So why IS Vantablack so incredibly dark?

In order to understand exactly how dark this material is, we have to go back to this idea of carbon nanotubes. Growing carbon nanotubes is not a new technology, and have been proposed for potential use in situations like cleaning oil spills and boosting solar energy storage due to its amazing structural makeup.

A visualization of the material; to give you an idea of scale, this material is almost 50,000 times smaller than a human hair.

The material is 200 times stronger than steel, 1000 times more conductive than copper, and almost half the density of aluminum (an important point that we'll revisit). According to the inventors of Vantablack, Surrey Nanosystems, when light interacts with this incredibly low density material it "is rapidly absorbed as it 'bounces' from tube to tube and simply cannot escape as the tubes are so long in relation to their diameter and the space between them. The near total lack of reflectance creates an almost perfect black surface."

Why in the world was Vantablack made?

To put it simply, Vantablack was originally made for NASA—not only for its color, but also the structural integrity of the pigment. The pigment was applied to telescope components to absorb unwanted light from entering a telescope's incredibly sensitive light detectors, but also proved "to withstand launch shock, staging and long-term vibration, making it suitable for coating internal components."

Vantablack is seen on the far left on a component for the International Space Station.

So given all of this information, what do you guys think of this phenomenon going on right now surrounding this material: should someone be able to gain exclusive rights to a color with this much potential? What are some other uses you see for a pigment like this in the world?

Also anyone who knows about this material and has more information to contribute, we'd love to hear in the comments below.

Header Image Credit: NASAblck-Crcl#1, 2014, artwork and picture by artist Frederik De Wilde

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Remy Laguna

9 years ago

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Is 'organic' an American word for 'the opposite of artificial'? Otherwise I would think of azurite and malachite as mineral sources. Nanotubes made of carbon even sounds more 'organic'.

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Ryan Langan

9 years ago

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Perhaps Spinal Tap needs a new album cover.

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John Hagopian

9 years ago

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Please get your facts straight, I prepared the samples above for NASA. It is in fact NASA Black which I developed for them for space flight instrumentation years before Vantablack. I am now marketing a similar formulation called piBlack for aerospace and commercial applications and yes; I am not making it exclusive to one artist.

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Neil Bradley

9 years ago

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I'd be less annoyed by this if his application of the material was less mediocre. You could do so much cool art with it wrapped around 3D surfaces to make them look 2D, but he decides to leave it flat?

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- Matthew Jarsky
  
  Neil Bradley
  
  9 years ago
  
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  It isn't a flat, 2D rectangle. It is a rectangular opening into a larger void cut out of the rock.
  
  I have not seen the sculpture shown at the head of this article in person, but I been lucky enough to have seen a few others and they are compelling peices of art.
  
  Looking into those blacknesses can be quite chilling or awe-inspiring.
  
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- Pedro F.
  
  Neil Bradley
  
  9 years ago
  
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  Agree! And why glorify a black rectangle?! It's the oldest trick around! Out of ideas?
  
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Mark Thomas

9 years ago

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Extremely light absorptive coatings have been around for a long time. While there are differences between them in scientific applications, the difference between 99% and 99.5% absorption isn't perceptible to humans. See for example:

http://www.acktar.com/category/BlackOpticalCoating

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- Neil Bradley
  
  Mark Thomas
  
  9 years ago
  
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  Oh man, this is pretty neat...
  
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Austin Liu

9 years ago

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Does the structural integrity of Vantablack include resistance to flaking off by contact? How resistant is it to heat? I imagine Vantablack would make a great solar receiver material, but I imagine if you heated carbon to high enough temperatures in the presence of air, it would burst into flames.

I also imagine this would make a fantastic radiant heating surface; in physics it is known that the worse a surface is at reflecting, the better it is at radiating its thermal energy. However, if one were trying to radiate heat from something at high enough temperatures, could Vantablack burst into flames or throw nanoparticles or tubes into the air from the violent vibrations of heat? Could that be a health hazard?

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Matt D

9 years ago

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First, it must be said that Vantablack isn't a color, it's a product offering made by a CVD carbon nanotube synthesis / R&D company. The color of Vantablack is simply black, black is a color, nobody owns the exclusive rights to use black.

Kapoor the artist is using Vantablack S-VIS, which is a pre-synthesized free-standing carbon nanotube powder which can be used to coat surfaces (art, etc.); this product is what the company has actually given the rights to (due to the coating methods being hazardous to an untrained professional). Carbon nanotubes are well-known and suspected to be carcinogenic and teratogenic.

There are also no exclusive rights to using carbon nanotube materials either, most nanotube suppliers are providing the material to the semi-conductor market (the equipment to produce nanotubes is expensive as hell and the product yields are low). If you have the funding, you too can have access to your own "UltraBlack" or "Fanta/PhantomBlack" or whatever you want to call it, so don't be upset that you feel you can't play with this material. Though I wouldn't recommend it either given the toxicity issues mentioned previously.

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Pedro F.

9 years ago

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In today's age, with all these posts and comments, his attempt to have his name carved in History; as the master of Vantablack; the most creative artist in the world; who saved the world of boredom by providing the witty uses of black; will be ridiculized. He'll be remembered as greedy SOB. No one cares if he paints millions of Malevitch squares on rocks

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Gijs Jonkheer

9 years ago

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As long as a color can offer technical advantages, it shouldn't be able to gain exclusive rights to it only for perception porpoises, especially if you are not the one to have designed the pigment or even just the color itself.

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Daniel Erwin

9 years ago

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Yves Klein did something similar with a particular blue color in the 1960s. I believe it also required a particular texture, not just a pigment. Yawn.

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Jack van Berkel

9 years ago

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Colour is a perception. A material is a perception materialised. Can perceptions be patented?

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- Neil Bradley
  
  Jack van Berkel
  
  9 years ago
  
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  Well, yeah, but I think that's better exemplified in more simple things. For example, figure ground depth perception illusions.
  
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