The Whitest Paint In The World Can Now Be Used On Your Car
The whitest paint in the world reflects 98.1% of light and can now be used to paint cars and ships among other things.
This article is more than 2 years old
Recently, researchers at Purdue University have created the whitest paint that’s thin enough to paint cars. Three years ago, a different set of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology created the blackest black. The color was extremely dark, and was able to absorb 99.9% of light. Now, the opposite has happened.
Last year, scientists succeeded in creating the whitest paint that was so white it reflected 98.1% of light. The color was so magnificent that it earned a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. The only caveat: the paint was too thick to adhere to certain surfaces.
The team at Purdue began the process of thinning out the whitest paint they had developed. The paint is now thin enough to be able to paint “things like cars, airplanes, trains, and even T-shirts,” reported CNET. The color’s extreme ability to reflect light provided an added benefit of helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a result of the reduced need for A/C.
In fact, the whitest paint “radiates all the heat into deep space,” said Xiulin Ruan, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue, according to CNET. By sending the heat into deep space, the whitest paint can help cool down the planet, a feature unique to this method of cooling. The paint has generated significant interest from numerous industries such as spacecraft manufacturers, clothing companies, and shoemakers.
The companies interested in the whitest paint immediately wanted to know where they could purchase it and if it could be made thinner. However, the paint isn’t available for sale. The researchers are hoping to make it available to the public and are trying to figure out a way to do so.
If clothing makers can get their hands on the whitest paint to use on their clothes, wearers could be spared some of the effects of the excessive record-high heat next year that much of the world experienced this summer. Many people know that wearing black when it’s hot isn’t a great idea, unless you want to feel uncomfortably overheated. The scientific explanation behind this fact is that black absorbs light, essentially trapping the black-clothing wearer in more heat.
In order to achieve the whitest paint, the researchers at Purdue created a nanoporous substance. This substance included a chemical pigment that is used in lubricants. They discovered that a 0.15-millimeter thick layer of the paint was enough to reflect 97.9% of the sun’s light.
The special chemical, called hexagonal boron nitride, is the reason behind the whitest paints’ amazing reflective abilities. The shape of the molecule was found to be more effective than sphere-shaped molecules found in different cooling paints. The hexagon-shaped molecule was better at reflecting back solar radiation.
The thicker, previous version of the whitest paint included a chemical called barium sulfate. Barium sulfate is a white crystalline powder. Although it also possesses reflective capabilities, the amount needed to achieve those capabilities required a paint layer 0.4 millimeters thick, which was much more than the 0.15 required by the newer formula.
As for that aforementioned blackest paint in the world, well, in order to explain how dark the blackest black color was, if someone were to cover a spoon in the black paint, “it’d be like creating a spoon-shaped black hole,” reported CNET. The new black color became even more popular than Vantablack, an older and very dark ebony that led artists to begin fighting over the rights to use it. The invention of the blackest black caused Purdue researchers to wonder whether it was possible or not to create the whitest paint. It appears it was.
