There's black, and then there's super-black. A new super-black wood-based material has been created that absorbs more than 99 percent of the light that hits it. What's more, the material was discovered almost by accident.
Researchers were working on water-repelling technologies for wood, using – and noticed that the application of the gas turned the ends of wood cells completely black. Further examination revealed the incredible light absorption properties of the new super-black material. The team, led by PhD student Kenny Cheng from the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada, has named their new material Nxylon.
Nyx is the Greek goddess of the night, and xylon is the Greek word for wood. Nxylon could find uses in everything from to luxury jewelry items. "Nxylon's composition combines the benefits of natural materials with unique structural features, making it lightweight, stiff and easy to cut into intricate shapes," senior author Philip Evans, a materials scientist at UBC.
The material has a velvety appearance, its inventors report. The plasma treatment actually changes the tiny structures on the surface of the wood, introducing indentations that and minimize any reflections. Indeed, when a gold alloy was applied to the material, it remained black.
This shows that the structure of the wood has changed – this isn't just an extra coating, but a reconfiguration of the fundamentals of the material. Super-black materials are valuable in industries like astronomy, , a.