Creating The Blackest Material Ever

hi all I just got myself a portable black background and I notice it shines quite a bit most likely it's because it's made of plastic I'm curious about how to make it blacker and what paint is needed for that well let's just figure it out yes the color black is definitely interesting but besides it there are also other dark pigments as well as light ones I think we should start by looking at the most interesting pigments as they can be not only vibrant but also quite toxic interestingly just like with some animals a red color hints at danger and the same goes for natural substances the red color can indeed indicate that this substance is potentially unsafe for example let's take Cinnabar which is mercury sulfide and has a vivid striking vibrant and Visually appealing red orange color in appearance you can discover this mineral in the vicinity of hydrothermal sources where it is often mined and extracted such as in geothermal areas working with such a pigment is very dangerous since it contains Mercury this substance is very toxic and therefore dangerous but still not as dangerous as mercury Itself by the way it can be easily optained from cabar Powder by simple heating at high temperatures Mercury sulfide decomposes into sulfur and Elemental metallic Mercury which easily evaporates and settles on the cooler walls checking creating a beautiful Mercury mirror because of this Caba is still the main mineral for extracting metallic Mercury and it is also sold as a quite expensive and highly sought after pigment for restoration artists besides cabar there's also a very bright and toxic natural pigment namely the Ora pigment from a chemical point of view it is a naturally occurring arenic trisulfide compound and you can find it near geothermal sources or steaming sulfur ferals such as like cabar this pigment is very toxic and dangerous for humans which however doesn't stop its use today it's not only used as a rare coloring agent but also as a raw material for making glass infrared cameras and semiconductors where they add arenic impurities to Silicon to create a ptype junction for example interestingly many bright natural pigments can often be toxic but in reality nature is not that simple and even a regular White pebble can turn out to be toxic let's take for example this mineral cite it is the main Caron of lead which has been commonly and extensively utilized since ancient times historically as lead white as a pigment they were highly valued and highly sought after because of their Immaculate and pure white color and good covering ability however it is not often found in nature that's why lead white was mainly produced artificially they started making them ancient times the Roman historian plini wrote in the first century ad that this paint was made by the action of the most potent vinegar on the finest lead scraps in the ancient world but over time more effective and carefully selected methods for producing this pigment were found the very oldest Dutch method involves first taking thin lead sheets were carefully and gently rolled into Spirals and then placed in clay pots that were glazed on the inside a little acetic acid was poured into the bottom of these pots were carefully covered with lead plates and then stacked several layers on top of each other and they were buried in horse manure the carbon dioxide released during the decomposition of manure along with acetic acid reacted with lead causing the metallic lead to convert into the basic carbonate and that white coating of lead white formed on the surface of the lead this coating was carefully scraped off thoroughly dried ground and washed producing this white paint required a significant amount of money in time regardless of the method used which is why the price was Skyhigh to check how white those lead ones were lead white I took it in its pure form and mixed it with bleached linseed oil which artists have been using extensively and widely used as a paint thinner since the Middle Ages because lead is as you might expect a relatively heavy metal its basic carbonate is also quite dense and therefore doesn't mix very well with linseed oil so I just mixed it with the oil as best as I could after that I applied these lead whites to the canvas with a regular brush so that in the future I could determine which of the whites is the whitest besides lead whites there are also antimony whes whites which are antimony oxide obtained by roasting its natural mineral antimony or antimony sulfide they are indeed also quite dangerous as antimony compounds are toxic however I also mix this white powder with lined oil which is a good thing this pigment spreads much better than lead whites and it also applies to Canvas much more easily in addition to the toxic lead and antimony whites I also took more modern zinc whites for comparison which I also

applied to the canvas after that I took another type of white pigment barium whites which are barium sulfate it's also used as a contrast agent for scanning the intestines berium compounds are quite toxic in themselves but due to the incredibly low solubility of berium sulfate in water this substance is generally considered safe the opacity of barium whites is low so they are rarely used applied whites titanium oxide to wrap things up I applied the most modern whites titanium whites which are pure white titanium oxide this substance is considered relatively safe although it has been banned for use as a food additive in the European Union since 2022 and to finally compare all these whites with the whitest substance at the moment I also made paint from fine powder of Teflon which looks a bit whiter compared to Titanium one whites I very carefully apply the paint made from this powder over the existing paints and then I leave it like that for a month carefully to let the linseed paint dry a bit and also to reveal any possible shortcomings of some whites zinc whites did not yellow they hold up best over time it turned out that only zinc oxide or zinc whites did not yellow and remained unchanged after a month on the balcony but the lead antimony and titanium whites have slightly yellowed in the sun this is especially true for lead whites as they darken over time when exposed to air because they turn into black lead sulfide well as you can see in some places the white paint based on Teflon also performed quite well so indeed zinc oxide and Teflon share the top spot for whiteness which pigment is the blackest can paint be blacker than black only an absolutely black body can be and is it possible to make paint blacker than black in fact only an absolutely black body can be blacker than black and it's actually quite easy to make one yourself to do this I just took a toilet paper roll and painted the inside black after that I sealed both ends the only thing is on one side I left a small hole now the light that enters inside can no longer Escape outside this black hole can be considered almost an absolutely black body I wonder if any paint can replicate this effect one of the oldest dark pigments was Galina a shiny mineral of such a dark gray color because of its shiny texture this substance was often used by ancient Egyptians for eye makeup although they probably didn't know about the toxicity of this pigment as it consists of lead disulfide apparently such a calm dark gray color of this mineral did not hint at danger right now this mineral is currently primarily used to obtain lead as well as silver which can be up to 1% in this pigment to check just how very black Galina can be I carefully took a canvas and divided it into equal parts which I will paint with different paints based on black pigments so it will quickly become clear which paint is the darkest I decided to start with Galina the powder of which I mix with linseed oil and then apply it to the canvas and so we continue so far this paint looks pretty black but let's see how the others perform because everything is understood in comparison besides Galina the ancient Egyptians and also the ancient Greeks used other black pigments for coloring the same goes for ceramic vases as Galina easily decomposes during firing for example one of the first black pigments was ground psite mineral or manganese dioxide interestingly this substance is also notable for being a very good Catalyst in some reactions for example when it's added to hydrogen peroxide it starts to decompose very quickly into water and pure oxygen this is all because manganese dioxide accelerates the decomposition reaction of hydrogen peroxide which under normal conditions occurs very slowly for my black painting I mix it as before with linseed oil and then apply it to the canvas as you can see this pigment is already much darker Galina so for now pite can be called the blackest pigment that's for now however since ancient times magnetite which is a mixed iron oxide has also been used as a pigment it's also called Mars black it can be mined using a shaft method as this mineral is also the main source of iron magnetite fully lives up to its name as due to the special arrangement of electrons between the two mixed iron oxides it has quite strong magnetic properties to find out how black this paint will turn out I first mixed the commercially available pigment Mars black and then I applied it to the canvas overall the paint turned out to

be quite dark besides the purchased pigment I also got curious about grinding this piece of magnetite that I brought from an Italian mine a couple of years ago this mineral is hard chipped a piece used grinder got magnetite Stones ground further then I started carefully grinding it in this improvised crushing device that I made the day before and slowly after rough grinding I got magnetite Stones which I then decided to carefully and meticulously grind in a coffee grinder due to the high hardness of magnetite this process took 20 minutes however not all the pieces of magnetite were able to be ground down so I sifted the larger Stones using a seeve and then I ground everything again in the coffee grinder in the end I ultimately got this dark magnetite powder which I'm actually mixing with lined oil resulting in Black magnetite paint but still when applied to the canvas it's clear that the degree of grinding here isn't the same as in the per sample of Mars black which is why the paint doesn't lay down as smoothly and the color turns out to be more gray besides metal oxides one of the very first black dyes that humans started using was regular charcoal which as you can see works great for drawing on paper charcoal consists of large sheets connected by carbon atoms which easily separate from each other under mechanical impact besides coal there is also a mineral based on it for example shungite which is mainly composed of carbon mixed with impurities of aluminum and silicon oxides it looks like this black stone to make a pigment from it needs to be ground first you can do this efficiently in a machine that can grind even the hardest Stones using very hard ceramic Birds after several stages of fine grinding we ended up with this black powder which can already be used as a base for paint as with other pigments I mix the shungite powder with linseed oil and then I apply it to the canvas it's interesting but by appearance this is so far the blackest paint I've made and that's not surprising since the carbon in shungite is essentially a morphous it means it reflects extremely little light besides amorphous carbon shungite also contains several other forms of carbon which I recently talked about in my video in it we obtained ferin which have every chance of becoming popular nanomaterials extensively used in both industry and medicine they are obtained in a vacuum by burning graphite rods in an inert atmosphere during this process a lot of byproduct is formed in the form of carbon black consisting of all possible types of carbon I became curious about what would happen if I mixed this suit with lined oil and how black the resulting paint would be as you can see it draws just great on paper but how exactly black will it indeed be compared to other black pigments when applied to the canvas it definitely looks extremely promising since the color turns out to be a bit darker than that of shungite but I still have one section left on the canvas which I decided to paint with the blackest pigment according to the literature specifically nanot tubes if you look online you can easily discover that the blackest coating vanta black consists of vertically aligned nanot tubes so maybe I can create a paint based on them for this I bought these nanot tubes they are already predispersed in some substance to make it easier to dissolve them in various solvents they are obtained in a similar way to ferin but the purification here occurs in an even more complex way than the ferin themselves when I tried to dissolve these nanot tubes in lined oil I wasn't really able to get a uniform mixture to get a more or less liquid mixture I diluted it with white Spirit but that didn't help much the paint still turned out with some lumps in the end I decided that maybe it would get better after drying that's why I decided to apply this improvised paint to the canvas perhaps after the solvent evaporates and the lined oil polymerizes the color will become darker let's take a look at this after sometime after a month of the paint's drying it's clear that the paint with Nano tubes has dried a bit and it started to look much darker basically if you look at it from different angles you could say that it turned out to be the blackest of them all but still it doesn't seem blacker than black it seems that the nanot tubes need to be dissolved in some unusual solvent which I think will be hard to find but that's not a problem because

the Japanese have already figured out what to dissolve these nanomaterials in and created a paint called misu Black by the way it cost quite a bit around €60 for this little JW I'm curious how black it will be after applying it to the canvas to create some sort of comparison I have already prepainted this canvas with black acrylic paint based on carbon black a day after drying I'm painting something resembling a black hole in the middle of this canvas using the Nano tube based paint in its wet form this paint really does look quite black I think we need to wait for it to dry a little bit more and see what it turns out like after a day in normal lighting this paint really does look very black but it all depends on the angle of view it's all because here apparently when drying some of the nanot tubes stand vertically to the surface While others are arranged randomly why is the light absorbed between them better than regular acrylic paint you can see that most of the painting has a bit of a shine but the black hole painted in the middle absorbs much more light which makes it look darker an even more unusual effect so if you paint a mandarin or an orange with this paint for example this effect is more noticeable against a white background as with such contrast even the shape of the Mandarin is faintly visible since this paint absorbs so much light I also tried painting a metal Corner which on white paper really creates the effect of an absolutely black body according to the manufacturers this paint absorbs 99. 9% of visible light I think they might have exaggerated a bit but for now this paint can still be called the blackest of them all left is to learn the secret from the Japanese about the solvent for carbon nanot tubes and you can support this paint yourself of course to create an even blacker surface the tubes need to be grown in a perfectly vertical position on the object being painted you using gas transport deposition but in this case the same Mandarin or orange could simply burn from the heat in the vacuum chamber and it would be more accurate to call it a coating rather than paint well I think after this video you learned what the blackest paint is made of and how it can be made well if you enjoyed this video as always don't forget to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel to learn even more new and interesting things