Pitch‐Black Nanostructured Copper Oxide as an Alternative to Carbon Black for Autonomous Environments

Abstract

Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) systems are becoming crucial for measuring the distance and creating a point cloud of the local environment, critical data for artificial intelligence to enable collision‐avoidance mechanisms. However, LiDAR utilizes radiation in the near‐infrared (NIR) region of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is prone to complete absorption by typical dark (such as painted by carbon black) colored objects, leading to loss of timely data points. Till date a very limited number of solutions have been put forward to address this. Herein, nanocrystallites of copper (II) oxide with specific prevalence of crystal facets that create nearly perfect black material at visible wavelengths are proposed. The sharp transition of absorbance near 700 nm wavelength light is attributed to the near‐unity ratio of (−111)/(111) the crystal facets and a crystal size of around 100 Å for the (−111) plane. Although indistinguishable from carbon black and with the same degree of measured blackness (My value 135.5), the nanocrystalline CuO shows 1500% better detectability by LiDAR. The study paves the way for the unconstrained use of dark objects in future society and infrastructure, moving a step closer toward fully autonomous operation of vehicles and robots.