Black is the new black

BOFFINS WORKING at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a material that reflects virtually no light.

According to the March issue of Nature Photonics, which we get for its amusing personal column, the team has made an optical coating made from the material that enables vastly improved control over the basic properties of light.

One of the upsides is that it could be used to create much brighter LEDs, more efficient solar cells, and a new class of "smart" light sources that adjust to specific environments.

A spokesBoffin said that the new material reflects things as well as air and makes glass look muddy by comparison.

It does this using silica nanorods are deposited at an angle of precisely 45 degrees on top of a thin film of aluminium nitride. µ