Engineers at MIT have created a material that’s so black it set a new blackness record.
This new ultrablack material, reported by MIT News Thursday, is made from vertically aligned carbon nanotubes grown on chlorine-etched aluminum foil and it captures 99.995% of light, making it about 10 times blacker than the previous record holder, Vantablack.
To show how the material eats light, MIT artist-in-residence Diemut Strebe collaborated with MIT engineer Brian Wardle to coat a 16.78-carat natural yellow diamond in the yet-to-be-named material. It basically makes the whole diamond disappear; there are no discernible features in the photo above. Read more…
