Session Details

Session 10: Light Metals Processing

Abstract Number:

88

Comparative study of commercial and lab-made blackening ‎product with historical results, looking at deposition process ‎parameters to enhance absorbance of light‎

Topics:

Aerospace / Defense / Military
General Surface Finishing

Energy in the form of photons are transmitted from objects across eons of time and space. ‎The emptiness of space allows many of these photons to reveal its geographic source, an ‎astronomical fingerprint left from the history of the cosmos. In our relatively crowded solar ‎system, locally generated photons create noise that can alter or mask an astronomical ‎fingerprint. Photon collectors are designed to maximize the signal to noise ratio by filtering ‎stray energy sources from the detector and the surface coating properties have a significant ‎role in whether a photon is absorbed or reflected.‎

A black copper oxide coating has been used for space applications because it forms a ‎textured black film that can trap many of the incident photons, converting them to thermal ‎energy, while others are reflected. The Ebonol-C product has been used since the 1950’s as a ‎copper blackening agent, but has been discontinued by the manufacturer, so we makeup the ‎chemical bath from common laboratory chemicals. In this study, we look at black oxide ‎coating deposition factors on an aluminum substrate that affect the efficiency of the surface ‎coating to absorb incident photons.‎