Blacker than black: SUPERBLACK coatings and foils

I have no idea if these are laserable, but they’re so cool. Remember a few years ago when researchers created a “superblack” coating that absorbs pretty much all visible light, so if you were wearing it, you’d look a bit like a black hole? Well, now it’s for sale as coatings and foils!

From Materia:

Superblack coatings and foils are made to absorb as much light as possible with a minimum of light reflection. These 3 sheets are all a superblack foils, but they all differ in detail.

Metal Velvet – Ultra Diffusive Coated Foil:
With a wide band performance, the Metal Velvet coating delivers the lowest available reflectance for UV VIS and IR light. By extension, Metal Velvet delivers highest in the industry light absorptance (99.99%) and is the solution when uncompromised optical performance is required. Metal Velvet foil is available with a self-adhesive backing allowing users to attach the thin flexible foil to virtually any surface.

Spectral Black – Semi-Specular Coated Foil
This foil delivers wide-band low reflectance across the spectrum from the EUV throught the VIS to the FIR, as well as a wide range of features and advantages. It can, for example, be applied in a wide range of straylight suppression and other applications where direct coating of parts is not practical. It is additionally Class 100 clean room compatible.

Maxi Black – Superblack Coated Polymer Film
Thin, flexible and durable, Maxi Black delivers the lowest in the industry reflectance across the spectrum from the UV through the VIS to SWIR together. Maxi Black is manufactured by innovative roll-to-roll thin film technology. The production site is equipped with up-to-date machinery allowing the manufacturing of thousands of meters of Acktar’s superblack film.

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Immediately I wonder whether the foil version would hold up long enough to be lasered…

Cool stuff.

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Very interesting! It actually looks thin enough to cut with a vinyl cutter.

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Finally found a coating for a K.I.T.T. (Knight Industries 2000) car, except there’ll be no flashing lights, no voice and no Hoff! … and it probably wouldn’t be a Pontiac.

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That looks cool. Is it laserable?

Well, it absorbs at IR, so at the least the laser can put energy in. Remaining questions for “can is laser” would be heat dissipation (first one calls itself metal, if it really is metal, probably not possible), and of course fumes (volunteers anyone?)

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