Vantablack is definiton of darkness. It is manmade substance that aborbs 99.965 percent of ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light. To give an example of how dark Vantablack is Surrey NanoSystems described it as the closest thing to black hole humans will ever see.

Darkest black

Vantablack is manmade substance developed by Surrey NanoSystems in United Kingdom. It is so dark that the human eye cannot discern it’s shape and dimension. Which means if you would cover round object and place it in front of another object coated in Vantomblack, the round object would dissapear and both objects would look completely flat.

How is it possible?

It is possible thanks to Vantablack’s tiny carbon nanotubes that are roughly 3500 times smaller than a human hair. A surface of one centimeter squared would contain about 1000 million nanotubes and when light strikes the tubes it gets trapped and  eventually dissipates into heat. If you see it on flat surface on it’s own with no other black material to reference it against it just looks like a black velvet surface, until you shine a torch on it and no light is reflected back. When other black surfaces sit side by side with it they look gray in comparison.

How is it made?

The name Vantablack is a compound of the acronym for vertically aligned carbon nanotube arrays and the shade black. Vantablack is not a colour it is material composed of a forest of vertical tubes “grown” on a substrate using modified chemical vapor deposition process. Because it is not a pigment or paint, you cannot just buy a pin of it like paint. Applying Vantomblack can only be done by specialized scientists in lab using complicated and patient processes and several machines and some extreme heat. From start to finish applying Vantomblack can take up to two days.