The World’s Whitest and Coolest Paint to be Used on Cars and Planes Needing Lighter-weight Material

A team of researchers took an old concept—the idea of white paint reflecting sunlight to naturally cool buildings—and combined it with nanotechnology to create some of the world’s whitest paints. Purdue University engineers are winners of the 2023 Gizmodo Science Fair for making the world’s whitest paints. In 2021, they had made the world’s whitest paint, which is able to reflect more than 98% of sunlight and greatly reduce the need for air conditioning in buildings. Last year, they created a lighter-weight version that could be used for planes, spacecraft, and other vehicles, which was still able to reflect 97.9% of sunlight with a very thin application of paint.

“For large vehicles like commercial airplanes, the paint is not an insignificant part of their weight,” said George Chiu, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue whose research focuses on digital printing. “There is actually a significant cost saving associated with getting the weight down. If you can achieve the same thermal property of the paint with an 80% weight reduction, that’s a significant saving for the airline. And the weight savings translates to fuel savings, and that makes for a more sustainable transportation system as well.”

The team is now working to ensure their paints can resist dirt, as well as exploring creating paint in other colours that can still reflect significant amounts of sunlight. The team is also interested in using nanotechnology to create a paint that can change colours based on the seasons, to keep buildings warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

https://gizmodo.com/whitest-paint-reflects-light-cools-buildings-nanotech-1850108248