The Darkest Color In The World Looks Cool, But Is It Useful?

Recently I watched a video of a BMW X6 spray painted in Vantablack, the darkest man made material ever.

Although it looked cool and reminiscent of Christopher Nolan’s Bat-mobile, outside of its look, I wondered what purpose Vantablack could actually serve.

And it turns out, it’s deeper than its appearance.

The Science Behind Vantablack

Vantablack absorbs 99.96% of radiation in the visible spectrum and even those beyond human sight, including UV & IR.

Vantablack’s properties give it excellent conduction and high thermal shock resistance.

It’s also hydrophobic, repelling water.

Vantablack is not really a colour, it’s a material.

Vanta stands for Vertically Aligned Carbon NanoTube Arrays.

Billions of these nanotubes are arranged to form Vantablack.

Each tube is roughly 20 nanometers in diameter.

So you can fit about a billion of them on a centimetre square.

Because nanotubes are so tightly packed together, light gets trapped.

Its photons bounce between microscopic spaces of each tube then dissipate as heat.

Applying Vantablack

Vantablack has several optical applications.

Pair it with infrared technologies, such as FLIR, and you have a high resolution system that can differentiate between heat sources.

Vantablack is also used in Earth based telescopes to minimize light refraction and atmospheric distortion because of its light absorbing properties.

Other uses include wiring in microchips, enhancing the strength of components in aerospace, touch screens, and ultralight wiring.

Vantablack in Art & Architecture

Of course architects and artists also want to get their hands on the creation.

Architects want to create optical effects on buildings, and artists want to design entire rooms out of the substance.

According to Ben Jensen, founder of Surrey Nanosystems, the makers of Vantablack, walking into a room coated in the substance would be an eerie experience.

If a light was on, it would look like the bulb is suspended in space.

You could see other people, but wouldn’t perceive the size, depth, or shape of the environment around you.

And the floor would appear nonexistent.

Spooky stuff.