Paint a Boeing 747 with just a kilo of paint?

paint a Boeing 747one of the commercial aircraft largest in the world, requires half a ton of paint, but an international team of scientists has managed to develop what could be the lightest paint ever created, with which only 1.3 kilos of a product would be needed that is also cheaper and environmentally friendly.

The development has been achieved by the Nano-Optics Research Group led by the scientist Debashis Chanda at the University of Central Florida (United States) and at the forefront of the research has been the Spanish Pablo Cencillo, who explained to EFE that the team set out to imitate nature by using nanostructures to manipulate light in ways that cannot be replicated with conventional pigmentations.

The results, which have been published in the journal Science Advances, suggest that this paint could be an ecological alternative in the future. “and multicolored” pigment-based dyes currently used and also contribute to efforts to reduce energy consumption since, according to the researchers, it absorbs much less heat and therefore spends fewer resources to cool spaces.

The paint is based on nanostructures of aluminum and aluminum oxide, explained Pablo Cencillo, who stressed that with a single layer -thickness 1,000 times less than that of a human hair- it would be possible to color any surface.

replicating nature

Several automobile manufacturers, some of the world’s leading chemical companies, several multinationals in the cosmetics and construction sectors, and manufacturers of electronic devices have already taken an interest in the development, the Spanish researcher reported, and has stressed the relevance that the reduction of the total weight of the objects has for sectors such as aerospace.

“Colour is a visual perception of light”stated the researcher, who pointed out that to control the color appearance of any object, it is necessary to intervene in the way light interacts with that object, for which there are two options: chemical or pigment coloring (traditional paint). and structural or physical coloration (on which the University of Florida team has relied).

Pablo Cencillo explained that in nature there are examples of colors (some beetles, fish or birds) that cannot be replicated with chemical pigments, or that the components of the air themselves are colorless and despite that the sky looks blue.

Why does the sky look blue? “Because the color is not the result of the composition of the air, but it is the result of its structure; that is, from the scattering of sunlight by molecules and particles suspended in the atmosphere. Structural colors are the result of structuring a surface or object to control the way light interacts with it.

And that’s what this team tried to achieve, to mimic nature by using nanostructures to manipulate light, to create a structure “ultrafine” with nanoparticles of two materials (aluminum and aluminum oxide) that are white, but because they are structured in a very precise way “we can control their appearance and color”.

Aluminum, very abundant in the earth’s crust

“We save time and money, gain versatility and avoid contaminants”highlighted the researcher, who also assessed that chemical or traditional pigmentation is lost over time while objects colored with “structural” they will retain that color virtually indefinitely.

The Spanish scientist also highlighted that aluminum is the third most common element in the earth’s crust and aluminum oxide is obtained in a simple way (by exposing the aluminum to the atmosphere), and that neither is toxic and the cost is low , so the paint they have developed is more environmentally friendly and cheaper if produced on a large scale.

Pablo Cencillo asserted that the feasibility of the invention has already been demonstrated, and that a new phase of industrial development is now opening, and among the most promising applications of this new technology he cited its use as “heat shield” since experiments have shown that it allows to keep objects and spaces that are under solar irradiation several degrees lower than other commercial coatings, with the consequent energy savings.

Source: EFE