The Discovery of a New, Safer Blue Paint
Throughout history, blue paint has been difficult to produce, toxic, rare, and short-lived. Cobalt blue can have carcinogens, and Prussian blue can produce cyanide, while other blues often fade with heat or acid. But in November of 2009, Oregon State University discovered a new manganese based pigment that bypasses all of these shortcomings.
They published their findings in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, and applied for a patent. Funding for the research came from the National Science Foundation, and they recieved assistance from researchers at the Materials Department of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The new paint is not only safer to produce and more environmentally benign than any being used now or in the past, but can survive intensely high temperatures and a week in a bath of acid. OSU Professor of Materials Science Mas Subramanian explains that the discovery of the pigment was a mistake. They were studying manganese oxides for their interesting electronic properties, when one day a student pulled some samples out of a furnace to find that they had turned a very brilliant blue.
At roughly twelve hundred degrees Celsius, the chemical structure of the manganese oxide changed. The manganese ions restructured themselves into an unusual trigonal bipyramidal coordination, producing a new blue pigment which appears to be better than any previous incarnation, and cheap to produce.
The pigment is likely to find its way into printers, automobiles, artwork, and house paint.