We use essential cookies for the proper functioning of the website and additional ones to make interaction with the site as convenient as possible. It helps us personalize your user experience as well as obtain analytical information to improve the service.
If you agree to accept all cookies, click "Accept all"; if not, click "Only essential". To learn more, view the Cookie Policy.
Other colors can be obtained from black — scientists
Scientists from Germany and China have developed a way to extract a richer palette of colors from black. To do this, they changed the nanoscale patterns of materials.
The researchers explained that the colors that we see in nature come from nanoscale patterns that reflect light in a specific way. Butterfly wings, for example, look blue to us because the tiny grooves on the wing surface only reflect blue light.
However, when surfaces appear black or white, this often happens because the nanoscale structures are completely disordered, with the result that all light is either absorbed or reflected.
A team of researchers led by the University of Birmingham has found a way to control how light travels through these disordered surfaces to get different colors.
The team, which includes scientists from the University of Munich (Germany) and Nanjing University (China), compared this method with the techniques that artists have used for centuries. One of the most famous examples of this is the Lycurgus Cup made of glass; it looks green when light shines on it from the front, and red when light passes through the Cup from behind.
The researchers explained that the colors that we see in nature come from nanoscale patterns that reflect light in a specific way. Butterfly wings, for example, look blue to us because the tiny grooves on the wing surface only reflect blue light.
However, when surfaces appear black or white, this often happens because the nanoscale structures are completely disordered, with the result that all light is either absorbed or reflected.
A team of researchers led by the University of Birmingham has found a way to control how light travels through these disordered surfaces to get different colors.
The team, which includes scientists from the University of Munich (Germany) and Nanjing University (China), compared this method with the techniques that artists have used for centuries. One of the most famous examples of this is the Lycurgus Cup made of glass; it looks green when light shines on it from the front, and red when light passes through the Cup from behind.