A team of engineers from Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology developed this material with inspiration from a beetle that has unusually white scales. The beetle, called cyphochilus, appears extremely white because it has a thin layer of a highly reflective material on its scales. This material’s unique geometry allows it to scatter light very efficiently. The researches designed a similar structure that would absorb light instead of reflect it. They used a series of small nanoparticle spheres, each with a nano-cylinder on top.
The resulting structure can absorb light up to 99 percent in the spectrum that ranges between 400 and 1,400nm, which is more than the human eye can see. The research is described in Nature Nanotechnology in a paper called “Harnessing structural darkness in the visible and infrared wavelengths for a new source of light.”