Chicago, Jan. 16 (Reuters): US researchers said today they have made the darkest material on Earth, a substance so black it absorbs more than 99.9 per cent of light.

Made from tiny tubes of carbon standing on end, this material is almost 30 times darker than a carbon substance used by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology as the current benchmark of blackness.

And the material is close to the long-sought ideal black, which could absorb all colours of light and reflect none.

“All the light that goes in is basically absorbed,” Pulickel Ajayan, who led the research team at Rice University in Houston, said in a telephone interview. “It is almost pushing the limit of how much light can be absorbed into one material.”

The substance has a total reflective index of 0.045 per cent — which is more than three times darker than the nickel-phosphorous alloy that now holds the record as the world’s darkest material.

Basic black paint, by comparison, has a reflective index of 5 per cent to 10 per cent.

The researchers are seeking a world’s darkest material designation by Guinness World Records. But their work will likely yield more than just bragging rights.

Ajayan said the material could be used in solar energy conversion. “You could think of a material that basically collects all the light that falls into it,” he said. It could also could be used in infra red detection or astronomical observation.

Ajayan, who worked with a team at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, said the material gets its blackness from three things.

It is composed of carbon nano-tubes, tiny cylinders of tightly rolled carbon that are 400 hundred times smaller than the diameter of a strand of hair. The carbon helps absorb some of the light. These tubes are standing on end, much like a patch of grass. This arrangement traps light in the tiny gaps between the“blades.” The researchers have also made the surface of this carbon nano-tube carpet irregular and rough to cut down on reflectivity.