A new pigment : glorious "YInMn" blue

Blue - lonely, holy, hip, irreverent blue. It was the first man-made pigment, and the last color word developed across cultures. The color reminds us of the ocean, sky, calmness and tranquility, one of the color mostly used by painters is now expanding! …drum roll

A new BLUE pigment is discovered!

What?? What do you mean?? How?

Well...In 2009, as part of his lab at Oregon State University, Subramanian - a professor of materials science -and his students were mixing and grinding chemicals then heating them to over 2000 degree Fahrenheit  to manufacture new materials that could be used in electronics. That was when one grad student, Andrew E. Smith, took a particular mix out of the furnace which had turned to a surprising, bright blue color.

"You know what Louis Pasteur said?" Subramanian asks. "Luck favors the alert mind."

Smith and Subramanian, as it turns out, stumbled upon an undiscovered pigment of blue — the first new blue in over 200 years.

"Color is a part of a spectrum, so you can't discover a color," Subramanian says. "You can only discover a material that is a particular color." That spectrum is red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet — no indigo. A pigment is a material that absorbs certain parts of the color spectrum and reflects others.

In this “complex inorganic pigment” is called "YInMn blue" - named after its chemical makeup of yttrium, indium and manganese oxides — and absorbs red and green wavelengths and reflects blue wavelengths in such a way that it came off looking a very bright blue.

“complex inorganic pigment” meaning it's not a naturally occurring pigment, Rather, it derives from a mix of various metal oxides — a metal element combined with oxygen.

The last new complex inorganic blue pigment to be commercially manufactured was cobalt blue — a mix of cobalt and aluminum oxides — in the early 19th century. Cobalt, however, can be toxic if ingested in large quantities, and it doesn't reflect heat particularly well and also It fades over time.

But this new blue is an exceptional one, because it reflects heat more than cobalt blue, it's really stable and it's a really great color. YInMn can endure oil, water and sunlight better than other available blues.

Read more about it here or here

I am excited and can’t wait for the day that this pigment is made into a little watercolor tube so that I can bring it home.

What do you think? would you buy the new color when it comes out?