White carbon black: the "optical magician" of the coatings industry

At Nippon Paint Laboratory, engineers are debugging a new type of matte wall paint: after adding 5% gas-phase white carbon black, the glossiness of the coating drops sharply from 80% to 15%, while maintaining excellent hand feel and scrub resistance. The magic of "extinction without color fading" originates from the unique nanostructure of white carbon black - its refractive index is close to that of resin, which can uniformly scatter light without absorbing specific wavelengths.


The high-end paint market is undergoing structural changes. Traditional matting agents such as talcum powder and calcium carbonate can cause rough coating due to their large particle size (>5 μ m), while gas-phase white carbon black has a particle size of only 10-20nm, which can reduce the surface roughness of the coating by 60%. In the field of automotive original paint, BASF has increased the amount of white carbon black from 3% to 8%, raising the glossiness standard of the paint surface from 60 ° angle ≤ 20% to ≤ 10%, meeting the ultimate pursuit of luxury brands for "mirror effect".


The technology competition focuses on surface modification. AEROSIL developed by Yingchuang ®  The R 974 model uses organic silicon coating to increase the compatibility between white carbon black and resin by three times, solving the problems of easy agglomeration and short storage period of traditional products. By 2025, the global market size of white carbon black for coatings will reach 1.2 billion US dollars, with high-end products accounting for over 60%.