(d) "Subramanian entered the annals of pigment lore even though he wasn't looking for a pigment or even mixing ingredients thought capable of making a distinctive color. He and his co-investigators were after electronics—specifically a multiferroic, a material that's both electrically and magnetically polarized, which is useful for computing. The yttrium [Y;钇] began as pale white, the indium [In; 铟] oxide black, and the 钇 锰 a bilious yellow. One of Subramanian’s postdoctoral students, Andrew Smith, ground them to gray [note the color before baking, which is shown in a photo of this article], placed the blend in a small dish, and stuck it in a furnace heated to 2,200F. Twelve hours later, out of the oven came a deep, vibrant, intoxicating blue. It was so radiant, so fantastic, it appeared almost extraterrestrial—the ripest Venusian blueberry, cleaned, polished, and glowing from within. * * * Shepherd Color Co sent representatives to Oregon State within a week of the paper's publication * * * Shepherd won the exclusive license in 2015 * * * (The company declined to disclose the terms of the deal.) Last September, eight years after Subramanian's discovery, the US Environmental Protection Agency finally approved YInMn for commercial sale in industrial coatings and plastics. Shepherd swiftly went to market. * * * Shepherd lists YInMn blue at $1,000 per kilogram, by far its most expensive pigment."
(i) I am clueless why Prof Subramanian says 钇 is yellow.
(ii) "Pure manganese is reactive, burns in oxygen, rusts in water": from the Web.
(iii) Andrew E Smith, PhD is presently Product Engineering Manager, at Uniform Color Company in Michigan.
(iv) "YInMn Blue [trademark] is a new pigment from Shepherd Color" Company based in Cincinnati, OH: from company website.
(v) About "Venusian blueberry." This article is the source of the term in the Web. No doubt Venusian os adjective of Venus. But what does Venus mean in this context? U can only guess that it is a swimwear company, which does have blueberry bikini.
(e) "Blue is one of nature's most abundant tones, but it's proved hard for human hands to create. When the ancient Egyptians tried to replicate the deep, oceanic tone of ultramarine to adorn tombs, papyrus, and art, they wound up with something more like turquoise [for Egyptian blue, see next posting]. During the Renaissance, ultramarine could be costlier than gold, because the lapis lazuli from which it derives was mined in remote Afghanistan. (Michelangelo nevertheless scored some for the Sistine Chapel ceiling.) The first modern synthetic pigment, Prussian blue, or ferric ferrocyanide, wasn't discovered until the early 18th century, by a German chemist trying to make red. Since then, many common blues (cerulean, midnight, aquamarine, smalt) have contained traces of cobalt, a suspected carcinogen. * * * In paint, cadmium [for red color] had long been considered safe and durable; its brilliance enlivened the works of Monet, van Gogh, and Munch"
(i) Prussian blue
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_blue
(ii) Edvard Munch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edvard_Munch
(1863 – 1944; Norwegian; most famous for The Scream (1893) )
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