In 2016, a group of engineers succeeded in creating a material that can absorb almost all the light it receives. The British company Surrey NanoSystems developed Vantablack, a structure made of carbon nanotubes so tiny they have the diameter of an atom. A few years later, they improved it with Vantablack 2.0, which can absorb 99.96% of light.
This achievement sparked a scientific competition to produce the blackest black. In 2019, engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a material that is ten times blacker than Vantablack, with the ability to absorb 99.995% of light from all angles.
Recently, researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC) introduced a new super-black material called Nyxlon. They have combined this material with wood, creating “wonder wood.” What’s so different and unique about Nyxlon is that it can remain black even when coated with an alloy.
How Researchers Discovered Super-Black Wood by Accident
The most interesting thing about the super-black wood is how it was created. Professor Philipe Evans and doctoral student Kenny Cheng at UBC’s laboratories were aiming to create a super wood. To achieve this, they used ultra-high-energy plasma to treat the material and enhance its ability to repel water.
However, when they applied the high-energy plasma technique to the cut ends of the wood, the surface turned extremely black, absorbing nearly all the light that reached it. The Department of Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University later confirmed this, adding that it found that the material reflected less than 1% of visible light.
This led the UBC team to shift its focus. Instead of giving basswood hydrophobic properties, they now focused on developing super-black materials. In fact, their goal is to discover the darkest materials on Earth, similar to the material discovered by MIT, which was also not initially intended to be super-black.
“Ultra-black or super-black material can absorb more than 99 per cent of the light that strikes it–significantly more so than normal black paint, which absorbs about 97.5 per cent of light,” Evans said. As per the name, Nxylon is a combination of Nyx, the Greek goddess of night, and xylon, the Greek word for “wood.”
One common factor between the MIT material and Vantablack is that they’re expensive to produce. Although they both effectively trap all the light, they’re costly due to their carbon nanotube structure. In the original Vantablack, approximately 1 billion carbon nanotubes formed a matrix. In the case of UBC’s discovery, the process involves burning wood with high-energy plasma.
Basswood samples coated with gold and vanadium alloy. In image a), the basswood hasn’t been treated. In b), the 500 W plasma has been applied and, despite the alloy, the black color is maintained.
But apart from being easier to produce, it’s the properties of Nxylon that really stand out. The wood remains black even when coated with an alloy, such as the gold coating used to make it electrically conductive. This is because the black color isn’t from a pigment or an external coating, but rather the wood itself.
Luxury Items, Solar Cells, and Telescopes
So, what is all this for? Super-black materials have traditionally had two very clear applications: telescope interiors, jewelry, and luxury products. In the case of space observation, telescope manufacturers use super-black materials to reduce unwanted glare during the search for exoplanets.
The art world has also shown interest in this type of material. With the advent of Vantablack, the Indo-British sculptor Anish Kapoor decided to buy the artistic exploitation rights to the material, preventing anyone else from using it. This prompted Stuart Semple, another British artist, to respond ingeniously: by creating the world’s most intense version of pink and sharing its use with everyone except Kapoor.
Kapoor challenged Sample by buying a bottle of his color pink, and Stuart did the same with a bottle of Vantablack, which he theoretically shouldn’t have. In short, it’s the most absurd controversy in the world. But moving on to more serious things, BMW has used this color to paint an X6, and the creators from worlds of art and luxury products have shown interest in super-black.
The UBC team is advocating to make its discovery more accessible. The university plans to create a company to expand the applications of Nxylon, as well as develop a commercial-scale plasma reactor to produce more super-black wood. This wood can be used in non-reflective ceilings and walls, in telescopes, and in watch dials as a replacement for onyx gemstones.
In this regard, “Nxylon can be made from sustainable and renewable materials widely found in North America and Europe, leading to new applications for wood,” Evans said. Moreover, he believes that the slow Canadian lumber industry could see benefits if there is interest in these types of applications, considering there’s “great untapped potential.”
This article was written by Alejandro Alcolea and originally published in Spanish on Xataka.
Image | UBC Forestry | Ally Penders
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