A scientist from UCF has invented a way to make paint that’s different than the one made with artificial molecules. This new type of paint is natural, good for the environment and lighter than the regular kind.
A scientist has made a new paint that is very gentle on the environment and also super lightweight. Instead of using artificial pigments, this “plasmonic paint” uses tiny pieces of aluminum and aluminum oxide to make different colors – which are much more eco-friendly than traditional paints! This paint can even be used to help save energy by reflecting infrared light, so surfaces stay cooler, reducing air conditioning needs. Plus, you don’t need much for full coloration – because it’s the lightest paint in the world – just 150 nanometers thick! To take things one step further, researchers are studying how this paint can be used for commercial applications and maybe even be produced on a large scale.
Researchers at the University of Central Florida have created a new environmentally friendly way to create colors. This is thanks to them taking inspiration from butterflies! The colors are big and can also help with cutting down energy use, which helps prevent global warming. These findings were just published in a journal called Science Advances.
Chanda said that the natural world has such bright and beautiful colors. In some special species, the structure of the body causes them to appear in different colors. Also, creating new colors with manmade pigments require making new molecules for each color.
Chanda’s research team invented a special type of paint that uses really small materials (aluminum and aluminum oxide) to make colors instead of using pigments.
Pigment colors are made with special molecules that absorb light. But structural colors use something different to create color – they use tiny structures in metals and oxides. This type of color is better for the environment because it doesn’t use artificially created molecules like pigment colors do.
Scientists have made a type of paint that can last for many years by using special sparkly particles and a special glue. Normally, paints change color over time because their pigment is not able to absorb the light, but this new paint does not have this issue.
The special type of paint called plasmonic paint reflects infrared light, which means it doesn’t absorb as much heat. This means that the surface beneath this type of paint stays 25 to 30 degrees cooler than when regular commercial paint is used.
Chanda tells us that the air conditioners in the U.S. use up 10% of all electricity and special paint called plasmonic paint could be used to solve this problem. This new paint can make a difference in temperature which would result in needing less electricity to cool spaces, resulting in fewer carbon dioxide emissions, reducing global warming. Plasmonic paint is also very light!
This paint is really special because it only needs really tiny layers of it, about 150 nanometers thick, to be fully colored. This makes it the lightest paint around! It’s so lightweight that you only need 3 pounds of it to paint a whole Boeing 747 airplane, when usually more than 1,000 pounds of regular paint would be needed. The inventor of this amazing paint was inspired by butterflies and their colorful wings.
When I was young, I had a dream of making my own butterfly. The thing that really fascinated me about them was the fact that they come in so many different colors!
Exploring the Possibilities of Ultralightweight and Non-Toxic Paint with Chanda at UCF
Chanda is taking the project further, to learn about how much energy their paint could save.
He says that usually big factories make lots of paint, but right now it costs too much money to produce in a lab. So we need a way to make it cheaper.
According to Chanda, there needs to be something new in the paint industry such as being non-toxic, providing a cooling effect and being ultralightweight which current conventional paints do not possess.
Chanda has really special positions in different departments at UCF. These are the NanoScience Technology Center, the Department of Physics and the College of Optics and Photonics. He studied photonics at the University of Toronto and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois afterwards. Finally, he joined UCF in 2012.
Most of the colors that are available on the market today are made from pigments. Unfortunately these traditional colorants come with some drawbacks, like fading in atmosphere and causing environmental pollution. Scientists have been trying to create a better kind of colorant – one without these problems. After lots of research, they developed a new way to make self-assembled colorants called subwavelength plasmonic cavities that can remain vivid even when you change the angle or polarization. It’s also easy to use as it can be applied directly to any type of surface with just one layer at 0.4 g per square meter – making it lighter than most paints out there!
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2. Research is looking into connections between certain molecules in our eyes and how the eye develops.
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4. Researchers are trying to improve ophthalmology research in China.
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