Blacker Than Black

An anonymous reader writes "British scientists at the National Physical Laboratory in London have invented the darkest material on Earth. 'It could revolutionise optical instruments because it reflects 10 to 20 times less light than the black paint currently used to reduce unwanted reflections. The key to the nickel and phosphorous coating's blackness is that its surface is pitted with microscopic craters.' Wonder how effective it would be as a solar heating surface ?"

Comments

Re:Wonderment

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonder how effective it would be as a solar heating surface ?

It wouldn't make much difference, because changing from absorbing 97.5% of the sunlight to 99.65% isn't going to change the economics of your solar collector much.

However if you are building a telescope and you want to reduce the stray reflections, going from reflecting 2.5% to reflecting 0.35% is a huge improvement

Re:What's blacker than black...

[Spock the Baptist]

Humm....

It's obvious that it's highly non-reflective in the visible portion of the spectrum, the question is how "black" is it in other spectrum regimes. Is it equally black in the IR, and/or UV?

Also, remember that a good absorber is a good emitter.