Slashdot Mirror
Reflectivity Reaches a New Low
sporkme writes "A new nanocoating material developed by a team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has the lowest level of reflectivity ever seen ... or not seen in this case. The amount of light reflected by the composite of silica nanorods and aluminum nitride is almost the same amount reflected by air. From the article: 'Schubert and his coworkers have created a material with a refractive index of 1.05, which is extremely close to the refractive index of air and the lowest ever reported. Window glass, for comparison, has a refractive index of about 1.45. Using a technique called oblique angle deposition, the researchers deposited silica nanorods at an angle of precisely 45 degrees on top of a thin film of aluminum nitride, which is a semiconducting material used in advanced light-emitting diodes (LEDs). From the side, the films look much like the cross section of a piece of lawn turf with the blades slightly flattened.' Suggested applications include increased efficiency in solar cells, more energy-efficient lighting and advances in quantum mechanics."
oh crap where did it go?
Even more birds hitting windows!
...move along.
They made several layers with increasing refractive indices, so the RI of the outermost coating is close to air while that of the innermost coating is close to the material it coats. What's cool about this is that it cuts reflexion across the EM spectrum, it doesn't just trade off reflectivity in one part of the spectrum for that in another, like previous anti-reflective coatings have done. Unfortunately, it isn't transparent so it won't work as a coating for glass.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Would this constitute "Transparent Aluminum?
typed on "Keyboard, how quaint"
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Huh?
So where did I put that new "low reflectivity" bottle of vodka? I can't seem to find it.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
A substance the matches the deep cold black hearts of the Vista activation process designers.
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
good news: we have a material which reflects no light whatsoever- now if only we could remember where the damn thing is...
How does reducing reflection increase the efficiency of LEDs? This stuff absorbs light. It seems to me like it would only be able to make things darker, not lighter. I'm willing to accept I just don't get it... but what is it that I don't get?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Now can they work on getting their (RPI) name out beyond the East Coast?
My degree is worthless when no one here (Chicago) has ever heard of the school!
except hockey players.
Error: Sig not found.
I can do better with a can of black spray paint... not just low reflectivity, no reflectivity.
Brought to you by the captcha "tangibly".
But only at night.
I wonder if they thought about doing this with radar instead of light- even sneakier stealth planes
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
If you leave one of these in direct sunlight, it gets really, really hot!
Reflectivity Reaches a New Low
Just when you started to think it couldn't get worse...
How much would it cost to cover your car with this?
Here's a link to the abstract. Don't think you can get the full article without some sort of subscription.
Anti-reflection coatings are nothing new. Their used all the time in optics. What's new about this acts as a broadband anti-reflection coating. If this can be transferred to commercial production it would have a huge impact on optical equipment.
Stealth coating. If I could coat my car with this stuff . . .
Who needs Fuzz Busters!
Probably extremely useful to military purposes. (ie. stealth sort of stuff)
was stealth coating for fighter jets
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
I think they should coat television and computer monitor screens with this material. This will help to see the image being displayed, since there will not be any glare to obscure the image.
How strong is this stuff at greater thicknesses? Could it be used for better windows (less breakable, more transparent)?
There are plenty of applications for high-strength high-transparency (which I'm assuming is a product of lower reflectivity) materials. Heck, if they're strong enough then depending on the cost there's a decent market for them just in the vehicle-window market (especially planes, jets, submarines, ships, etc).
until I see it
95% of all computer errors occur between chair and keyboard (TM)
..An expensive alternative to painting something black.
God Be Gone
I use titanium dioxide enriched paint (white) as a topcoat on my projector screen.
I wonder if the basecoat were of this material and the topcoat tiny (20 micron?) glass beads, would it give good results?
I figure since the beads are round and the back of the display has no reflectivity, the light from the projector wouldn't bounce back and blind you like if you were to use a mirror because the back doesn't reflect...
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
... isn't the illusion of water on the road a product of light reflecting off of the air?
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
"Reflectivity Reaches a New Low"
Those scumbags. Worse than the RIAA and MS combined!
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
I hereby nominate this nanocoating material for 'employee of the month'! (everyone has to win at least once)
I've always thought that nanotech was the new black -- now they're gone and proven me right :-)
n s_Obamas_blackness_0209.html :-)
Of course, given that it's not descended from West African slaves, is it really black?
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Colbert_questio
Ian Ameline
How is that different from 45 degrees ?
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I am a manager at a large company. My employees always compliment me on how much they appreciate my open door policy. They can always walk in and ask me questions. Frankly, they're starting to annoy me! I can hardly get any work done.... I've only been able to play to level 2 of Tetris today and its a Friday!
What is the possibility of making a transparent door with this new material? My open door policy will still remain in effect. But my door will always remain closed. I think I will like my job again when I hear them whisper, "He used to be a great guy, but dealing with him now is like hitting a brick wall!".
Me at a night club in the corner sipping my Jolt with my penguin shirt has even lower reflectivity. No one even knows I'm there. And that's with a _clean_ shirt even.
... isn't the illusion of water on the road a product of light reflecting off of the air?
No.
It's caused by the curvature of light refracted by the difference in refractive index between the hot air near the sun-heated surface and the cooler air above it. The light bends back up without "touching" the underlying surface.
You only get a little bend. This is why you need a very hot surface to get enough of a bend to be visible at all. It's also why you only get it at large distances, where the line of sight is nearly parallel to the ground.
It looks like water because you look at the ground and see a a region of like of the sky's color, shimmering due to convection current - generated patches of uneven refractive index in the air rather than surface ripples.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
We can use this to make machines that have proportions of 1 by 4 by 9.
And I bet a LOT of TV companies would be very willing to pay a great deal of money for this.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
"My ex must have had a mirror made of this shit!"
look for bomber-sized gaps in background radiation
boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse
In Hollywood, snippers are often discovered by their gun-mounted scope front glass! This can save it.
Reflectivity Reaches a New Low
Eh, until reflectivity wakes up in a dumpster with a dead hooker, not knowing how it got there or what happened the night before, I think it could get lower.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
First thing they did (apart from searching for the sample for an hour or two) marked it with a wide
fatty red stripe.
And the answer is none. None more black.
I think we can come up with a few more interesting uses for this stuff
set up some invisible walls on the pavement, fun with the neighbours
(good one for the students)
want to start your own cult?
How about walking across a transparent platform in mid air or just above water made of this stuff
Jesus eat your heart out
Now you too can have an invisible aeroplane just like wonderwoman
How about donning a superman outfit, fit a platform to the roof of your car
and see how many accidents you can cause, when onlookers see a real life superhero flying down the street
worried about weapons of mass destruction appearing on the news?
new and improved (mostly) invisible nukes, watch out for that healthy green glow
want a flying / hovering car of the future, how about invisible wheels?
(watch out for those pot holes)
I wonder if 2 way mirrors would be less noticible from the mirror side, using this stuff
since you could probably increase the amount of reflective mirror material on one side while maintaing the same level of brightness from the other side
because of the decreased reflectivity maybe
I saw the Einstein logo and read the headline as "Relativity reaches an newe low." I was very confused -- when did relativity become variable?
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
Try painting your car with this stuff, drive past a cop shooting LIDAR, and see if you get pulled over.
FWIW, police officers are trained to aim the LIDAR at your front license plate for best results, as the retroreflective surface provides the best return. However, this can be tricky with a moving target Of course, anything that provides a sufficient reflection will usually work.
First thing they did (apart from searching for the sample for an hour or two) marked it with a wide
fatty red stripe.
The engineer put on the stripe.
The scientist noticed it was easy to find if it was set on a sheet of white paper.
The truth shall set you free!
... a whole new era in bird-killing window technology. We'll never go hungry.
'Cause I love non-visible light photography - but quartz lenses are a fortune - if you can find one.
Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen.
Wow, my alma mater is actually on slashdot, doing something possibly useful. It is unfortunate, though, that while the school has been pushing big on research its undergraduate studies are still not improving (I still interact with undergraduatesfrom the school daily).
Brought to you by the numbers π, e, and 0x1B.
The Nazis back in WW2 where doing all kinds of obscure military research. On of them being the search for the 'ultimate black' that would not reflect any light whatsoever and enable soldiers to appear as non-dimensional shadows. They didn't get very far iirc.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I'd never heard of RPI until a couple of years ago, but I'm very impressed with the school. I've met a couple of top-notch engineers from there, and the science coming out of RPI seems outstanding.
-FL
I was rather disappointed. Though I still like being able to say that it will now be so much harder to recover if you happen to lose your marbles.
-FL
What's this? Nanocoating? Oh. When I read the headline I was assuming it was a story about President Bush..
Soze says this can mean only one thing: STEALTH WHALES!
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
E to the X dy/dx
E to the X dx
Cosine, secant tangent, sine
3.14159, square root, cube root, log of pi,
Dis-integrate th'em RPI!
http://cheerleaders.union.rpi.edu/squad.html
Let's give a cheer for Old Rensselaer,
You bring the whiskey, I'll bring the beer!
Send the freshmen out for gin,
And don't let a sober sophomore in!
We never stumble, we never fall,
We sober up on pure alcohol!
When we yell, we YELL LIKE HELL
For the glory of Rensselaer!
Hotblack Desiato will love this for his new stunt ship! After he's revived from spending a year dead - for tax purposes...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Just one question.
"Black body radiation. The development could also advance fundamental science. A material that reflects no light is known as an ideal 'black body.' No such material has been available to scientists, until now. Researchers could use an ideal black body to shed light on quantum mechanics, the much-touted theory from physics that explains the inherent 'weirdness' of the atomic realm."
HOW CAN YOU USE AN IDEAL BLACK BODY TO SHED LIGHT?
to put on my cars plate f them photos.
Now I can finally get around to painting all those faux holes like Wile E. Coyote.
This should be used to make bicycles and bicycle clothing in areas with a high population problem.
Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
So this coating is impedance-matched to free air at visible frequencies?
do a search on gradient antireflective films. This was done in the 1980s and used extensively for very high energy laser optics by several labs. By either reacting glass surfaces, or by coating the surfaces with nanoparticles, one can readily produce surfaces with essentially no reflectance (0.01%) over the entire visible spectrum. What is produced is a porosity gradient whose index varies from 1.0 at the surface to that of the bulk material. Since there is no clear interface, reflectance is broadband. At one government lab, meter-sized optics were treated. I remember that one visiting congressman ran into one of the windows because it was, functionally, invisible. These technologies never saw broad acceptance because porous surfaces react with the environment, and reflectance increases (requires periodic cleaning). Sigh, it seems that scholarship is dead...
New Low-reflective material offers hope for the ugly, one slashdot visitor is quoted: "When i used to look in mirrors they would break, but now i dont have to see myself and the mirror doesnt break!, its amazing!"
How thick is this stuff shown in the picture?
I want this for my glasses! This means I'll see even better!