Slashdot Mirror
Laser Turns All Metals Black
Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at the University of Rochester have found a way to change the properties of almost any metal by using a femtosecond laser pulse. This ultra-intense laser blast creates true 'black metal' from copper, gold or zinc by forming nanostructures at the surface of the metal. As these nanostructures capture radiation, the metals turn black. And as the process needs surprisingly low power, it could soon be used for a variety of applications, such as stealth planes, black jewels or car paintings. But read more for additional references and a picture of this femtosecond laser system."
Does this black metal have any special properties aside from being black? The article mainly talks about other ways of making it black not being as good- is that all this really does?
Your spaceship is ready....
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
This ultra-intense laser blast creates true 'black metal'
Rubbish, true 'black metal'
(sniff... brings back memories of seeing them in '83.)
Trolling is a art,
Are we talking like optical black, suitable for coating the insides of instruments like telescopes and microscopes?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Interesting applications listed, detectors, chemistry, etc. What I'm wondering is the question implied by the editor, can this blast be used to make the metal absorb radar waves? If they can made a laser pulse make the substance absorb all visible EM radiation, can they do the same for invisible? This could have significant applications for the military if it can, not just for better stealth aircraft, but think of it. An invisible to radar destroyer, aircraft carrier, tank even. This is defiantly worth keeping an eye on, for the many scientific applications as well as the military ones. If it's really as easy as creating a femptosecond pulse to make something stealth many other nations would be able to do it soon as well.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
How long until you can get your logos engraved onto your laptop/ipod in black (instead of the current efforts).
liqbase
Picture can be found here
I really should just go to bed...
DugUK
and his additional references
"None more black"
"wall outlet" ease of the use + "it would drill a hole through your skin" = ultimate home security system
a black engagement ring? perfect for your goth bride! Buy One Now!
Since it's the holiday, the usual rants against the article submitter, Roland Piquepaille, have been rather muted. To sum up:
* He gets a lot of articles posted to the front page, which makes the rest of us jealous.
* His articles tend toward pseudoscience, or at least towards the sort of flashy, headline-inspiring science that does little to advance human knowledge.
* He used to link to his personal blog, which really irritated people who'd love to have their own blogs get Slashdotted on a regular basis.
* He now links to his zdnet blog, which really irritates people who'd love to have their own blogs get picked up by a big corporate website.
* To top it all off, he's French, so all the right-wing nutters hate him automatically.
My irritation comes mostly from the second point -- and, I'll confess, the first as well. But as his defenders (and even the Slashdot editors) have noted, it's not like he's got some inside line to CmdrTaco's desk. He just finds himself at the right place at the right time.
Nonetheless, I recommend continuing to tag his articles with "pigpile", just so's we can keep up.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
It is, but it also insulates a bit. If you paint something black, it emits and absorbs radiant heat with the properties of the paint, not the metal. This is about making the metal itself black so it absorbs/emits more efficiently.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
We all know that true black metal is Mayhem.
*bows to Mr Adams*
black is the new gold.
(and silver, and bronze..)
Having an aircraft made out of treated metal would make it one heck of a (visually) stealth plane. As it is, the U.S. stealth planes require a going-over with a fine tooth comb after each mission to ensure no scratches, dents, or chips are in the paint. Presumably a metal approach would reduce turn around time.
Oh yea, and black kicks ass.
Seems like the perfect coating for solar panels for hot water. The search has always been for the best heat absorbing surface. This type of coating should be the most efficent coating for heat absorbsion.
I think this would be nice for car exhaust pipes. If you use normal paint on anything that gets very hot, the paint burns up. This would be a nice alternative to paint for extremely hot applications.
Who says it's impossible to rub off? It's a very thin surface treatment. A quick rub with sandpaper should remove it to ordinary metal. And no reason you coudn't paint over it. Actually paint might adhere better to a fuzzy surface like this, when repainting over over an enamel paint job you take the shine off it with some fine sandpaper first.
Since other people have pointed out the fact that this wouldn't burn off or rub off easily, one of the other things that this would have as an advantage over paints and powder coats is that they add thickness to the material in question and this (theoretically, at any rate) would not. That would be a big plus for precision insturments. Especially if it has any oxidation inhibiting properties.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
Paint is also heavy - a couple of hundred kilograms for an airliner, and almost a tonne for a B52.
blacker than the blackest black times infinity...
They found on the way that by using a nanosecond laser they produced Emo metal, which can cut itself.
Task Mangler
"This ultra-intense laser blast creates true 'black metal' from copper, gold or zinc by forming nanostructures at the surface of the metal."
Since when were there only 3 metals known to mankind? The summary blows.
Then you look at the articles.
"The key to creating black metal is an ultra-brief, ultra-intense beam of light called a femtosecond laser pulse. The laser burst lasts only a few quadrillionths of a second. To get a grasp of that kind of speed--a femtosecond is to a second what a second is to about 32 million years."
And:
"Currently, the process is slow. To alter a strip of metal the size of your little finger easily takes 30 minutes or more, but Guo is looking at how different burst lengths, different wavelengths, and different intensities affect metal's properties. Fortunately, despite the incredible intensity involved, the femtosecond laser can be powered by a simple wall outlet, meaning that when the process is refined, implementing it should be relatively simple."
I'm guessing this has to do with etching an intricate structure. Perhaps also that the laser can only be fired at a given rate. None of this is explained at all well.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Does this black metal have any special properties aside from being black?
Well, that one property alone makes it excellent for building Ford Model-Ts.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
All the unaccounted for dark matter is covered in nanotubes.
So this could make for more efficient thermal solar panels.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
This technology has huge ramifications for chemical reactions that need a catalyst, and also in the area of fuel cells.
Unlike Roland, I actually try to link to the article and not some empty blog. Roland, your technology trends suck. Link to the originating article you fool!
Physorg
Also, does Roland even have a degree in science? Because he sure doesn't ever seem to have a grasp of the important things in the articles he submits.
I would presume that this is a very thin portion of the surface, since there is no data given, and that it sounds like it heats the metal to a vapor (maybe plasma?) and allows it to cool so quickly that it "freezes" in microstructures (excuse me - nanostructures). For all soft metals, then, a simple scratch would reveal the shiny surface free of the effects below the new "coating". Also, a surface with near zero emissivity and high conductivity would likely cause burns very quickly if left in the sun on a summer day. How would you like a nice burn from your car should you accidentally graze your spiffy black racing stripe? Also, wouldn't there be a propensity for these nano-strucutures to foul due to a microseive-like effect - collecting all the crud that just floated by? Seems like a nightmare to clean after pollen season.
It certainly does have some applications, and optics seems to be the obvious place. Having an emissivity of (well, they didn't say) 1e-8 would certainly make baffles more efficient.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Samuel L. Jackson can star in the next Terminator movie.
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
Man has finally learned how to turn gold into something resembling lead.
God spoke to me.
If the laser can be modulated it could be used to etch a quasi-indestructible CD-ROM kind of media. For example gold or titanium could last a long while.
I see a red door and I want it femtoblasted black....nope, you're right, doesn't scan.
All available data suggest that regardless of any of this, the sun will still come up tomorrow.
For many, many years we've been able to use lasers to spot-anneal metals, which produces a very dark (though not totally black) mark on the metal while introducing no change at all dimensionally. One area where this process gets used quite a lot is in artificial limbs/implants where the foreign body to be introduced needs to be permanently marked for identification but can have absolutely no sharp edges or anything else that might irritate or damage the tissue. This new process sounds like something similar, although the femtosecond laser angle is kind of new. I'm curious to see how practical it turns out to be, as the few femtosecond lasers I've worked with were *extremely* sensitive to temperature changes.
For those having difficulty reconciling the "entire power output of the US from a standard AC outlet" thing, understand that you are radiating for a ridiculously short period of time, so you can get a very high peak power in that pulse while still having a very low average power usage if you can unload a decent percentage of the entire duty cycle's worth of power in that one pulse. The Nd:YAG machines that I worked with were only 90 watts or so CW (continuous wave), but when you cranked the Q-switch down to a low enough rate, you could get a peak power in excess of a quarter-million watts in each 10 microsecond pulse. 10 microseconds is 10 *billion* times longer than a femtosecond (same comparison: one second to 317 years), so you have the possibility of having staggeringly large peak powers in these really short pulses.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
This could hardly be used for car paintings, or any other big surfaces, since:
"For example, blackening a piece of metal the size of a little finger currently takes about 30 minutes."
And matt black hasn't ever been a favourite car color.
This "technology" is nothing new. Just a prof trying to make something mundane sound flashy.
Hit things with enough laser fluence and the surface atoms will move around, and may even be blasted off of the surface. This is the basis of a standard materials synthesis technique, pulsed laser deposition (PLD). Hit a target with a laser, and collect the ejected material on a nearby crystal.
Anyone who has done PLD knows that the surface of the target gets rough when you blast it. If the target is a metal, and the roughness is smaller than the wavelength of light (nanoscale), it will absorb light - it will be black.
In any case, the article asserts that the "blackness" is a material property and is therefore permanent. Nonsense. Touch it and the surface particles will rub off, leaving behind a shiny metal surface. Further, I'd be extremely surprised if there weren't tons of existing patents on surface modification by lasers. There are certainly tons of academic publications on the topic.
Another way to create true black metal is to play music really fast onto a noisy old tape recorder.
There is a surface finish called parkerizing which is not too difficult to do and holds oil very well. It's the same finish they put on Glock handguns. I think you can get a kit and do it yourself.
"This ultra-intense laser blast creates true 'black metal' from copper, gold or zinc ...."
Death to false black metal!
:)
by someone really really old....
A laser that turns all metals black. All metals being copper, zinc, and gold. As if these are the only metals around.
Time to wake up. It isn't the bronze age anymore.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
So the Alchemists have at last achieved the long sought goal of transmuting Gold into Lead. Oh wait.......