Paint may not seem like the heaviest component to consider when building large equipment like airplanes, but its mass can add up. Now, a new lightweight substance could offer a welcome alternative: Nanospheres, nearly invisible silicon crystals, have been discovered by two materials scientists at Kobe University, Minoru Fujii and Hiroshi Sugimoto.Research published in the journal Science shows that particles can reflect light due to very large and efficient scattering ACS Applied Nanomaterials detail. The result could mean covering a surface with bright color while adding only 10% of the weight of paint, fast company Report.
This reduction could have a huge impact on factors such as cost and CO2 produced. Simply put, as the weight of an aircraft increases, the aircraft must use more fuel, directly increasing the amount the airline spends (and then charges the customer), as well as the amount of fuel burned into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
Minoru and Hiroshi’s discovery focused on structural color rather than pigment color to demonstrate and maintain tone. The former absorbs wavelengths while reflecting the wavelengths received by the human eye. Structural color, on the other hand, is “the result of the interaction of light with periodic micro- and nanostructures, which produces color through interference, coherent scattering or diffraction”, according to the organization. Encyclopedia of Nanotechnology.
The team’s work follows previous research in which they were able to create nanocrystals of specific sizes. Then came popular suspensions, which allow crystalline silicon nanoparticles to mix with a supporting liquid rather than separate. Currently, the color of the nanosphere-based ink changes as the team changes the size of the nanocrystals. Larger particles produce warm tones such as red, while smaller particles produce cooler tones such as blue. These tones should remain the same no matter which angle one views them from.
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