{"id":9165,"date":"2018-04-18T16:34:53","date_gmt":"2018-04-18T23:34:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/impact\/?p=9165"},"modified":"2018-04-18T16:41:15","modified_gmt":"2018-04-18T23:41:15","slug":"quest-next-billion-dollar-color","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/impact\/2018\/04\/quest-next-billion-dollar-color\/","title":{"rendered":"The quest for the next billion-dollar color"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photography credit: Ian Allen for Bloomberg Businessweek<\/em><\/p>\n

From plastics to cosmetics, the impact of our YInMn blue discovery that started\u00a0with science but goes beyond the color and pigment industry. But materials chemist Mas Subramanian<\/a> and his team of researchers\u00a0are not done yet. They continue to pursue more pigments and make the world even more colorful.<\/p>\n

The notion of a substance capable of imparting color onto another material has generated much excitement and curiosity in science. <\/span>Recently,\u00a0Bloomberg<\/a>\u00a0visited our campus and spent a day with Subramanian to delve into the renowned accidental creation of the new pigment YInMn\u00a0<\/span>blue he and his students stumbled upon in 2009. This was his 57th career patent. <\/span><\/p>\n

This in-depth feature article<\/a> chronicles Subramanian’s process and captures his thinking that led to the breakthrough moment, seeing what others might not have seen in\u00a0<\/span>a\u00a0moment of pure imagination.\u00a0The chemist reflects on discoveries that have yet to be made as the world awaits the next new color, which not only has the\u00a0potential to generate hundreds of millions of dollars annually but also to transfix the world as we know it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Subramanian holds the Milton Harris Chair Professor of Materials Science in the Department of Chemistry at OSU.<\/p>\n

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Below is an excerpt from the Bloomberg Business article.<\/p>\n

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Mas Subramanian, the biggest celebrity in the uncelebrated world of pigment research, glances at a cluster of widemouthed jars containing powders in every color of the rainbow, save one. He\u2019s got OYGBIV. \u201cWe\u2019re getting closer,\u201d he says brightly. He points to a jar of reddish-brown dust, smoky and rich as paprika. Fetching, but it isn\u2019t what he\u2019s looking for.<\/p>\n

During his nine-year sojourn into the strange, finicky realm of color, Subramanian, a materials science professor at Oregon State University at Corvallis, has grown infatuated with a form of chemistry that he, like many of his peers, once considered decidedly low-tech. His renown derives from his accidental creation, in 2009, of a new pigment, a substance capable of imparting color onto another material. YInMn blue (pronounced YIN-min) is an amalgam of yttrium, indium oxide, and manganese\u2014elements deep within the periodic table that together form something unique. YInMn was the first blue pigment discovered in more than 200 years.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t only the exotic blueness that has excited the color industry, but also the other hues the pigment can generate. Subramanian soon realized that by adding copper, he could make a green. With iron, he got orange. Zinc and titanium, a muted purple.<\/p>\n

Scanning these creations, scattered across his workbench like evidence of a Willy Wonka bender, he frowns. \u201cWe\u2019ve made other colors,\u201d he says. \u201cBut we haven\u2019t found red.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Continue to the full article on Bloomberg Business<\/a>.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Read more<\/a> about Mas Subramanian’s\u00a0research, YInMn blue, the Crayola crayon Bluetiful inspired by the pigment and the other remarkable ways the serendipitous discovery has rippled through industry and through our imaginations.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photography credit: Ian Allen for Bloomberg Businessweek From plastics to cosmetics, the impact of our YInMn blue discovery that started\u00a0with science but goes beyond the color and pigment industry. But materials chemist Mas Subramanian and his team of researchers\u00a0are not done yet. They continue to pursue more pigments and make the world even more colorful. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5667,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[640793,523],"tags":[646150,208318],"class_list":["post-9165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ch","category-research","tag-author-debbie-farris","tag-blue-pigment"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6vHeb-2nP","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10452,"url":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/impact\/2018\/12\/chemist-who-discovered-yinmn-blue-named-aaas-fellow\/","url_meta":{"origin":9165,"position":0},"title":"Chemist 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