Close your eyes and think of a paint as light as a feather, which lasts for centuries and contributes to energy saving. Done? Well, reopen them and read here: a group of researchers has developed a revolutionary paint inspired by butterfly wings. Called “plasmonic painting,” this innovation promises to change the way we paint surfaces.
Goodbye pigments: it's the era of "structural" color
Unlike traditional pigment-based paint, plasmonic paint creates color through the organization of nanoparticles. To give you an idea, only 1,4 kg of this paint is enough to cover a Boeing 747. With conventional commercial paint 450 kilos are needed. This extraordinary lightness could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions related to flight, but it's not just that. The plasmonic paint structure reflects the entire infrared spectrum, absorbing less heat and keeping underlying surfaces cooler. According to the researchers, the surfaces painted with plasmonic paint remain 13 to 16 degrees Celsius cooler compared to those covered with traditional commercial paints.
Debashis Chanda, nanoscientist at the University of Central Florida and leader of the team that created the paint (I'll link the study here) is enthusiastic. He says the energy savings achieved through the temperature difference could reduce the use of air conditioning and, consequently, carbon dioxide emissions, helping to combat global warming.
The technology behind plasmonic paint
Plasmonic painting uses nanoparticles of two colorless materials, aluminum and aluminum oxide, arranged differently on an oxide-coated aluminum mirror. This arrangement allows you to control how light is dispersed, reflected or absorbed, creating a wide range of colors.
The next steps
Nature has already shown how bright colors can be created without pigments, as is the case with butterfly wings. How many times from these pages will I thank the biomimetics? Plasmonic paint follows this path, offering a lighter and more sustainable solution than paints based on synthetic pigments. Currently it has only been created in the laboratory, but researchers have already managed to produce different colors using easily scalable techniques. The next step will be to work on large-scale production.
In short, it's not long now: it's not yet time to put aside the cans of traditional paint, but plasmonic painting could soon become a concrete solution to reduce the environmental impact of our homes and means of transport. For a world, in every sense, more colorful and lighter.
