3 Brand New Colors That Scientists Discovered

Nowadays, we have everything from bright blue cars to green cupcakes and pink
phone cases, but our lives weren’t always so full of rainbows. For millennia, we mostly had
to make do with natural pigments and dyes, which were dug out of the Earth or taken from
plants. And while white chalk is great for cave painting, it doesn't work so well for multi-
colored clothes. If you want flashy colors that'll last – but don't want to spend a ton of time or
money harvesting them from nature – turn to chemistry. And in the last 300 years or so,
chemical synthesis has revolutionized the scientific, art, and fashion worlds.

One of the first pigments made in a lab was Prussian blue. It was created in Berlin
around 1706 and was famously used to dye the uniforms of the Prussian army. The color was
included when Crayola debuted their crayons in 1903, and it still appears in crayon packs
today. You just might know it by a different name, since it's been called 'midnight blue' since
1958.

Now, the details of the discovery are a little fuzzy, but the story goes: a paint maker
by the name of Diesbach was trying to cook up a red pigment from some scale insects. But he
borrowed some chemicals from a labmate that happened to be contaminated with iron and got
a dark blue color instead. The color of something depends on how that object absorbs and
reflects light. A red apple, for instance, looks red to us because it reflects the long
wavelengths of red light, and absorbs the rest. But a blue shirt is reflecting shorter
wavelengths of blue light. Or, because of complementary colors, something can appear blue
because it only absorbs the color of light that's opposite on the color wheel: orange. White
light is a mixture of all colors, so when one gets taken away, you perceive what's left – the
complementary color.

There are different reasons why a pigment might reflect or absorb certain
wavelengths. With Prussian blue, it's because of iron and something called charge transfer.
The pigment has two differently-charged iron atoms that will absorb orange light and use that
energy to move an electron from one iron atom to the other. And because of complementary
colors, it ends up looking blue. Driesbach's mistake was serendipitous because, at the time, a
lot of blue pigments faded, like indigo. Or they were super expensive, like ultramarine, which
was made by grinding up semi-precious stones shipped from Afghanistan. Prussian blue was
cheap and durable, so all of Europe wanted it: for clothes, stamps, and in their fine art. It was
a smash hit, and not just for its looks. Because Prussian blue can bind metals like cesium or
thallium, the pigment has had a second life as a drug to treat people for heavy metal
contamination.

Another highly sought-after pigment was discovered while trying to make medicine.
Specifically, quinine, a natural drug that was used to treat malaria. 150 years after the
invention of Prussian blue, there still was no easy way to make purple. The ancient Romans
got purple from Mediterranean snails, but it took a lot of them to make much dye, which
meant the color was expensive. So when an 18-year-old chemistry student in London named
William Henry Perkin was tinkering with a molecule from coal tar, a sticky type of distilled
coal, and failed to make quinine, he was still excited. Because, instead, he stumbled upon a
bright purple substance that could permanently dye fabric. He called it mauveine. Mauveine
is an organic pigment, made mostly of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen. So it's not purple
because of metals, but because of the way electrons are distributed when organic compounds
form rings. Carbon rings are only possible when every other carbon is held together by a
double bond. That means electrons are constantly moving across all of the bonds, in a kind of
hexagonal donut cloud. They're pretty easy to excite with yellow light, so that's what gets
absorbed. And because purple is the complement to yellow, the pigment looks purple!

Now, if you think color discovery is just a thing of the past, think again. In 2009, a
grad student at Oregon State University was heating up some manganese oxide and other
chemicals to around 1200 degrees Celsius in hopes of generating a new, super-efficient
electronic material. He hadn't made the next silicon, but he did create the first new blue
pigment in two centuries. It was a bright blue, and because it was made at such high
temperatures, the scientists knew it had to be a pretty stable chemical. Along with oxygen, the
pigment was made of just three elements: yttrium, indium, and manganese. So it was named
YInMn blue. The key to the color is the how the manganese atoms are ordered within the
crystal structure: they sit inside little pyramids surrounded by some oxygens. Because of the
pyramidal shape, the manganese electrons are repulsed by different amounts by the oxygens,
so they have different energies. That means there's some wiggle room to get excited so that
the electrons can absorb a lot of light. YInMn absorbs red and green light well, but still
reflects blue light, so it's a vibrant blue. It's also non-toxic and reflects heat, which means it
doesn't just look pretty – it could be used to paint roofs and keep houses cool. The same team
has since reported that if they add zinc and titanium, they can make purples. And if they
replace the manganese atoms with copper or iron, they can make greens or oranges with
similar properties.

This year, Crayola decided to honor YInMn blue by giving it a coveted spot in its 24-
pack of crayons. But, like Prussian blue, it's going to be renamed first. Which, you know,
makes sense for marketing, but means kids might miss out on some cool chemistry.