Black Is Cool - New Functional Black Pigments From BASF For Solar Heat Management

Florham Park, NJ — Unbearably hot black surfaces exposed to sunlight, warping dark colored window profiles, and other side effects of sunny days may be a thing of the past. The solar heat buildup of dark colored, even black, construction elements can be cut in half when using our new NIR-transparent black pigments Lumogen® Black FK 4280 and Lumogen® Black FK 4281.

Carbon black is being used to create dark or black colors, but it gets hot in the sun. The pigment's high absorption in the solar near-infrared leads to severe heat buildup in the construction element. BASF's newly developed functional black pigments solve this problem. The exceptional transparency of Lumogen® black pigments in the range of solar infrared radiation from 750 nm up to 2500 nm cuts the solar heat buildup due to incident sunlight in half. As a result, the construction element stays cooler. In addition, Lumogen® black pigments offer excellent heat resistance, color strength and migration stability as well as extreme resistance to chemical and physical effects, good dispersibility and insolubility in all common solvents.

Aside from solar heat management in construction, the coating and printing ink industries are other potential applications for these cool black pigments. In automotive and decorative coatings as well as in printing applications such as vinyl films for furniture and decorative applications, reduced heat buildup leads to increased service life of the coatings and products.

SOURCE: BASF