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The first blue pigment discovered in 200 years is now commercially available
- pmoriarty 6y ago"The pigment--which is the first new blue discovered in 200 years--was finally approved by the EPA for use in artists' materials last May." The EPA under the Trump administration.[1][2][3][4] I'd take a wait-and-see approach on this one. Not to mention that there are so many great colors that have seen hundreds of years of human use.. as opposed to this one, which has seen zero. [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/climate/epa-trump-biden.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/climate/epa-trump-biden.h... [2] - https://apnews.com/article/politics-science-environment-e0c89b49e3ed2408731d49c6f0c88bcb https://apnews.com/article/politics-science-environment-e0c8... [3] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-trump-administration-epa-suspends-environmental-protection-laws/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-trump-administratio... [4] - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/how-the-trump-administration-is-reshaping-the-epa https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/how-the-trump-administ...
- sitzkrieg 6y agoits seen zero years of use, no kidding?
- Bjartr 6y agoAs easy as it is to look at Trump's impact on the EPA and simply assume everything the EPA did during his tenure is de-facto bad. In this case, it would be useful to understand what specific impact his changes had on the EPA's ability to effectively evaluate the pigment against the Toxic Substances Control Act testing requirements mentioned in the article. People clearly put a lot of work into this pigment, it'd be a shame to shun that only because they happened to apply for its use in consumer products while Trump was in office.
- Talanes 6y agoYeah, I don't ever recall seeing something that made me think Trump was in the pocket of "Big Pigment."
- Forge36 6y agoIf you believe they are doing something wrong, tell them. There is an email listed regulatoryaffairs@ They may not be nefarious, I wouldn't judge them on someone else's actions. I don't know that two are related https://www.shepherdcolor.com/about/overview/ https://www.shepherdcolor.com/about/overview/
- ThrowawayR2 6y agoAccording to the article "YInMn Blue has been approved for US use in industrial coatings and plastics since September 2017", so saying that it has seen zero years of human use is not quite true.
- mcbutterbunz 6y agoThis is an area that I know absolutely nothing about, so the notion that new pigments are being created is fascinating to me. I’ve never really considered pigments and the chemicals used to make all of these colors.
- tdaltonc 6y agoConsider getting the book "The Secret Lives of Colors." The book itself is a beautiful object and the contents are a great dive in to the history and chemistry of pigment and color. https://g.co/kgs/Np4PF6 https://g.co/kgs/Np4PF6
- archsurface 6y agohttps://duckduckgo.com/?q=The+Secret+Lives+of+Colour&t=ffab&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=The+Secret+Lives+of+Colour&t=ffab&...
- Daub 6y agoCheck out this timeline of pigments through the ages. See how the industrial revolution multiplied the number of colors available. http://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/intro/history.html http://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/intro/history.html
- andrewla 6y agoPhthalo Blue is more recent than 200 years; it was isolated in the early 20th century.
- boibombeiro 6y agoThe article specifies as the first non organic pigment.
- airstrike 6y agoWhile that may be true, it does not make the headline any less inaccurate and clickbaity
- jakear 6y agoAnyone here have suggestions for viewing this and other novel pigments?
- AareyBaba 6y agoYou can see the blue pigment on an AMD Radeon Pro graphics card. https://www.amd.com/en/graphics/workstation-series https://www.amd.com/en/graphics/workstation-series
- jrockway 6y agoI kind of thought you were kidding, because nobody on earth cares what color their workstation/datacenter graphics card is... but indeed they are using YInMn blue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMXS1A2uBeE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMXS1A2uBeE And made a video about how cool they are for putting certain paint on a graphics card. I will continue to be amused because people call Intel "team blue" and AMD "team red", but in this case AMD's product is blue.
- mhh__ 6y ago> because nobody on earth cares what color their workstation/datacenter graphics card is I think some HPC applications do actually have some aesthetics because the bean counters want to be able to look at their billion dollar datacenter and say "My datacenter is bigger/prettier than yours" rather than just having a black front panel.
- xyzzyz 6y ago> I kind of thought you were kidding, because nobody on earth cares what color their workstation/datacenter graphics card is... I’m not sure if you’re joking here or something, but as it turns out, many people buy video cards to play video games, and many of them care about how their gaming device looks like. They install LEDs and stuff. It’s pretty cool.
- jrockway 6y ago
- xwdv 6y agoI don’t get it, how would you even discover a pigment? How would you know what you’re looking at is novel?
- userbinator 6y agoI don’t get it, how would you even discover a pigment? I suspect it starts with "this compound has a nice colour, how about its other properties?" How would you know what you’re looking at is novel? There are extensive lists of existing pigments.
- refurb 6y agoChemistry - either organic or inorganic. We already know what is responsible for the colors of molecules. So you can build new molecule or complex based on those principles and some of them turn out to be scientifically interesting or commercially valuable.
- Pasorrijer 6y agoI think it's possible the discoverers looked at it and said they had never seen such a colour before artificially
- peteretep 6y agoGuessing if you’re a chemical engineer it’s one of those properties you’re keeping an eye out for?
- krisoft 6y ago> How would you know what you’re looking at is novel? Pigments are chemicals. Chemist can use various techniques to analyse a sample and tell what is its composition. After that they search for it in the literature and if they find that the given chemical was not described previously then it is novel. That’s it. > I don’t get it, how would you even discover a pigment? The article answers this. “ Chemist Mas Subramanian and his team serendipitously came upon it while conducting experiments with rare earth elements as part of their work with semiconductors.” That is to say they were experimenting and something turned out as blue. They didn’t expect this so they analyzed the sample and then did a literature search.
- JohnJamesRambo 6y agoIs this ok? >Yttrium is mostly dangerous in the working environment, due to the fact that damps and gasses can be inhaled with air. This can cause lung embolisms, especially during long-term exposure. Yttrium can also cause cancer with humans, as it enlarges the chances of lung cancer when it is inhaled. >Indium compounds are encountered rarely by most people. All indium compounds should be regarded as highly toxic. Indium compounds damage the heart, kidney, and liver, and may be teratogenic. https://www.lenntech.com/periodic/elements/y.htm https://www.lenntech.com/periodic/elements/y.htm
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- awalton 6y agoIts oral LD50 was tested to be more than 5000mg/kg according to Shepherd Color Company's MSDS for Blue 10G513 (as it is known commercially). That's well into "non-toxic" as categorized by the EPA. For perspective, that's more than ten times less toxic than caffeine. So, probably pretty safe when used appropriately. I wouldn't go inhaling it, since any fine powder's not great for the lungs, but that shouldn't be news to anyone. Just wear your N95 when mixing dry pigments as you always should.
- ehnto 6y agoI think that's for the processed pigment though, what about during manufacturing?
- corndoge 6y agoIsn't LD50 only relevant to acute exposure?[0] Just because you can eat 5 grams of something and survive doesn't mean repeated exposure to it in smaller quantities or in other ways won't hurt you (obviously). E.g. acute inhalation of asbestos has no recorded mortality. I think I'm missing something in your post. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose
- icedistilled 6y agoIt's not the LD50 for Cobalt Blue, but the LD50 for soluble Cobalt salts is between 150 and 500 mg/kg and Cobalt toxicity seems to be a thing. But the LD50(rat) for cobalt blue is > 10000 mg/kg according to the MSDS I'm looking at. That doesn't sound toxic. Wiki says this about cobalt: "it causes respiratory problems when inhaled. It also causes skin problems when touched; after nickel and chromium, cobalt is a major cause of contact dermatitis" So for people looking for an example of something that's somewhat toxic, but much less toxic as a paint. Here you go, Cobalt Blue. The color this new can be substituted for. yeah the toxicities are different, but it's the same idea.
- pacificmint 6y agoHere are two articles about how this pigment was discovered: https://www.npr.org/2016/07/16/485696248/a-chemist-accidentally-creates-a-new-blue-then-what https://www.npr.org/2016/07/16/485696248/a-chemist-accidenta... https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-quest-for-billion-dollar-red/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-quest-for-billion-do...
- fermienrico 6y agoI've bought several hundred tubes of paint in last 20 years. I've seen artists gravitating towards more expensive paints as a sign of better pigmentation which is completely misplaced. Pricing of pigments is largely a complex equation including marketing by paint manufacturers to pose Cadmiums and Chromiums as "premium" quality paints. The truth couldn't be farther from that. Modern synthetic pigments are superior, safer and have far better lightfastness than the Cadmiums and Chromiums. Perylene red is amazing. Mix it with a dash of Titanium white and you can get very close to the opacity of Cadmiums. Mix it with Zinc white and you've got a far more brilliant red than anything else. But, Artists' I've worked with tend to gullibly gravitating towards the more expensive == better philosophy. I found this hilarious when buying paint during my early days in art world. The quality of paint is measured by several characteristics such as pigment load, lightfastness, opacity/transparency, tinting strength, etc. Not its scarcity in nature.
- billfruit 6y agoVery insightful. Will be interested to know of your preferred 12 colour palette.
- fermienrico 6y agoI use a Yellow Ochre Light, Pthalo Blue, Titanium White, Zinc White, Transparent Oxide Red (for blocking), Pthalo Green and Perylene Red :) Although, you can just use Richard Schmid's palette, replace all the toxic junk with modern pigments and you're good to go. The thing is to stick with the palette forever for many decades so that your paintings have a cohesive harmony.
- billfruit 6y agoThanks. Only after you mentioned did I lookup Perylene Red, looks great.
- bluenose69 6y agoI notice that the Windsor & Newton watercolour series has nothing called Perylene Red, but it has a nice looking colour named Perylene Maroon that seems similar.
- Scoundreller 6y agoOne more thing for art forgers to worry about.
- ChuckMcM 6y agoI would love to see this color in person. I had not realized it was such an excellent IR reflector either, from an industrial perspective that should be a boon for IR lamp heating systems in terms of efficiency.
- getpost 6y ago"From Egyptian wall paintings to the Venetian Renaissance, impressionism to digital images, Philip Ball tells the fascinating story of how art, chemistry, and technology have interacted throughout the ages to render the gorgeous hues we admire on our walls and in our museums." Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color Paperback – Illustrated, April 15, 2003 https://www.amazon.com/Bright-Earth-Art-Invention-Color/dp/0226036286/r https://www.amazon.com/Bright-Earth-Art-Invention-Color/dp/0... https://www.philipball.co.uk/ https://www.philipball.co.uk/
- shivamgarg19 6y agoNice!
- qndreoi 6y ago"YInMn Blue’s appeal stems in part from its high opacity, which means you don’t need to apply much of it to get a good coating." This! I've noticed that blue exterior house paint, even with an expensive primer, just doesn't cover very well. This stuff seems about 100 times too expensive for that application.
- dang 6y agoRelated from 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20245672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20245672
- trevortheblack 6y ago> The store sells the paint for $179.40 for just 40 ML. By comparison, the other structure acrylics it offers starting in sizes no smaller than 75 ML are available from just $8.70. $4.485 per ML versus $0.116 per ML. That's a difference of almost 40x cost. I wonder how much of that is offset by how saturated/opaque the pigment is. Still, an incredibly expensive blue. > Connecticut artist Michael Rothman got his hands on some Kremer YInMn blue pigment in 2019 and produced his own paint, “hand milling the dry material in acrylic emulsion resin,” he said. I wonder what the difference in cost is for the dry pigment
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- tekkk 6y agoThese people really didnt think about how people are going to pronounce their pigment? YInMn - what a monster of a name. In the olden days at least people gave colors great names that were easy to prounounce and provided them personality. Ultramarine, prussian blue.. Even vantablack has a nice rhythm. It's nice as techinical name, I guess, but I'd hope they have some better brand name they are going by.
- GreenWatermelon 6y agoI decided to pronounce it "Yelenmen"
- triclops200 6y agoThe character after the Y in YInMn is an I (uppercase i), not an l.
- La1n 6y agoOne of the videos in the article has it as Yin Min.
- BossingAround 6y agoIt seems to me like it'd have a Chinese-like pronunciation, that is Yin Min. Tangentially, as a non-native speaker, "ultramarine" has a fairly similar amount of information encoded in the name as "Yinmn"--pretty much zero. So, the two names ("ultramarine" vs "yinmn") are pretty much equivalent to eme, personally. Goes to show that naming things "properly" is difficult (I suspect it's impossible actually).
- adrian_b 6y agoOriginally, "ultramarine" meant something like "imported merchandise", i.e. something brought from the other side (ultra-) of the sea (-marine). It provided the information that this is a foreign pigment that must be better than the lower-quality pigments produced locally (e.g. azurite).
- russellbeattie 6y ago
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- habosa 6y agoIf I was working in a lab and my experiment turned a deep blue I'd say "cool!" and move on. I didn't know that discovering a new color was something meaningful. I wonder who told these scientists "stop what you're doing you've just discovered a new pigment".
- newdude116 6y agoDo you have a chemistry background? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Farben https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Farben Do you know what the name means?
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- summm 6y agoIndium is very rare. Used for transparent conductors on displays etc. Is it really worth it to use it in a slightly better blue? In other words: does its current price really reflect all the future use we could get from Indium?
- adrian_b 6y agoIndium is comparable in abundance with gold, so it is indeed very rare. Indium is completely irreplaceable in LED's, especially in the LED's used for lighting, and also in other important semiconductor devices, e.g. in the GaN transistors that are now used in the latest miniaturized power bricks. Currently the largest quantity of indium is used for the transparent conductors required in all displays, from smartphones to TV's and monitors. There are alternatives for this use, but all have various disadvantages, e.g. a lower lifetime or a lower efficiency. I agree that wasting indium, which is probably the element with the lowest known resources compared to the known future needs for it, to make something like pigments, where there are a lot of mostly equivalent alternatives, is a serious mistake.
- annoyingnoob 6y agoI would say, do not underestimate the value of art. The article described an artist that made is own paint from the pigment. He painted a depiction of an ancient bird, its absolutely beautiful. This use was not a waste of resources and will in fact last much much longer than any screen made in 2021. Its arguable that using precious resources for products that last less than 20 years, in many cases less than 5 years, is a true waste.
- adrian_b 6y agoI agree that using such a pigment for a small number of art objects would certainly be justified, like also the use of gold in art objects or jewelry, instead of its more valuable technical uses, for which there are no alternatives, e.g. in protecting electrical contacts from corrosion or in semiconductor metallization. However, if instead of using this pigment in a few valuable paintings, it would be used in a high number of ephemeral sketches done for practice, that would be a waste. Nevertheless, the high price at which the pigment has been launched is good, because it will probably deter casual use.
- ncmncm 6y agoTrying to reconcile "extremely high price" with "we want to paint buildings with this stuff". Clue?
- 542458 6y agoVery expensive buildings? Relatively dilute paint? Agreed, it does seem like a disconnect.