As someone who lives in the southern US, anything that can keep the AC from running all day is cool in my book!!

@jeffkilgore6320

10 күн бұрын

Literally.

As a person living in the Nordics, I have understood that one main purpose of a roof is to keep rain out of the building. If the material is super hydrophilic, like said, it would soak up huge amounts of water transporting it to other building materials, and also become really heavy doing so. This might pose issues with the structural strength of the house. Of course, in the Nordics cooling energy use is not such a significant design parameter with houses 😅

@janetteshelly905

5 ай бұрын

My first question- what about rain?

@gubunki

5 ай бұрын

not to mention if it freezes the iceshards forming will destroy the structure for sure

@Kevin_Street

5 ай бұрын

I think this material would probably work better in paint than in tiles, for just this reason. A thin layer of pigment on a hard surface won't soak up water like the tiles would.

@PhucNguyen-vf1zt

5 ай бұрын

Those super hydrophilic tiles might be unsuitable for houses in the Nordics, but they will prove their usefulness in the hot weather of Asia. To solve the problem of transporting water to building materials, we just need to separate the roof with some supporting structure. Of course, this is only for the hot areas. Snow in cold weather is too heavy, and supporting structures might not work

@PhucNguyen-vf1zt

5 ай бұрын

And actually, if you live in hot weather, I think it’s much better to use solar panels as a roof. Those super hydrophilic tiles should be used on the wall.

Being hydrophilic sounds disastrous actually. In cold regions it means it would be destroyed as the ice expands, and in warm environments it would get moldy very fast.

I can see dirt eventually clogging all those pores. It would be interesting to see how efficient it really is in a long term situation and if it really makes it worth using over other commercially available products over longer time frames out in the elements.

@bethanyhunt2704

5 ай бұрын

How big are dust particles? If they're bigger than the nano scale, they won't be able to get into the pores.

@shnoog

5 ай бұрын

@bethanyhunt2704 You're probably right. Dust would most likely be larger. Testing it out in the real world is the only way to know for sure.

@ashleyobrien4937

5 ай бұрын

or you could just google the size of dirt particles, math actually is reliable, no need to test

@shnoog

5 ай бұрын

@ashleyobrien4937 there's still no way of knowing how dirt will build up on a vertical piece will compare with one on a normal roof pitching. It may not go inside the pores but it can build up over the top and block them.

@PhucNguyen-vf1zt

5 ай бұрын

Maybe this isn’t a problem if those tiles truly take inspiration from insect scales. I mean, insects always look clean, right?😄

The channels NightHawkInLight and Tech Ingredients both have videos on making your own infrared cooling paint.

@Maungateitei

8 күн бұрын

Yeah. And they are real, unlike this hyped up opportunity for patents and commercialisation of something which will never perform as they claim it does. It does not radiate in the Atmospheric Infrared window like Calcium carbonate does. So it absorbs longwave heat from the environment. And cannot get rid of it like carbonates do. For their claimed result it would have had to be conducting heat to a cold reservoir below it. It probably absorbs UV too. So wouldn't be much good in the tropics or southern hemisphere. Carbonates work because there is no incident long wave IR photons from the atmosphere that excite their bond angle to wiggle. But it wiggles from ambient heat absorption picked up from air molecules and other IR photo frequencies, and and radiates photons at that frequency straight out into space. Good old fashioned whitewash, would very likely outperform this. As would a pure white limestone or marble tile. The high filler density achieved with carefully sized nanospheres of carbonate is not necessary if you have a quicklime system like whitewash. It forms the ceramic like nano structure by adsorption of Atmospheric CO2.

I’m waiting for one that changes it’s reflectivity and emission with temperature, so that at hot temperatures it turns white and emits heat, and at cold temperatures it turns black and absorbs heat, meaning it will always try to keep your house/car/head at the same temperature in both winter and summer :)

@thomasbailey6997

12 күн бұрын

I heard some news many many years ago and I think in Italy they made a tile that did this like many great ideas it faded away.

@izzyplusplusplus1004

2 күн бұрын

​@@thomasbailey6997 Replace "faded" with "whisked".

@davidconner-shover51

Күн бұрын

@@thomasbailey6997 Concept likely works, implementation, not so much.

Years ago while working in another part of the country, I had this old company house on a farm, and one day while exploring my new surroundings I came across some spiders, tiny little things, but it was their color that blew me away, they were silver ! like real polished chrome , incredible things that I've never seen anywhere else..

For desert dwellers, reflecting the Sun is important, but preventing outgoing/upwelling radiation at night is also needed. In deserts, comfort costs are similar from cooling during Summer days, and heating during freezing winter nights. What is needed is a material that is extremely reflective for both visible light and thermal radiation, a broader white. Such a material would run a few degrees warmer during sunlight, but would conserve much heat during clear cold nights. What we really need is a switchable material, one that would be visibly white and thermally black when we need cooling, then switch to visibly black and thermally white when heating.

@timhoeffel

7 күн бұрын

There is a commercially available product that achieves your specifications. It reflects solar heat on the exterior and emitts conductive and convective heat on the interior. Let me know if you want more info.

The deserts have buildings with two roofs. The first is heated by the sun. Air circulating between the first and second roof keeps the house a air temperature.

That's bad ass!!! And with the ability to be produced in other colors at the same time, if cost can be kept at a consumer level, then it's a real game changer for housing.

Thanks for another great video! I love the way you introduce a lot of actual scientific terms, but always know which ones to to explain in detail and which ones to breeze past quickly. That quality of judgement, knowing both what information is needed to understand the subject and having a feel for what your audience can quickly comprehend in a fast paced video, is probably the most important part of science education. And you do it really well. As for this new material, it sounds great! If they can put it in paint and use it in mass quantities it might make quite a difference in cooling buildings without electricity. I wonder, if this material was written into the building code for a large city and it gradually became the dominant color on rooftops, could it make a dent in the heat island effect? It would be amazing if a single color of paint could measurably cool an entire city.

Be great to have a follow-up on this at some point.

But how to keep it clean. So it keeps functioning in the radiative gap.

@gertinoss

5 ай бұрын

Look at the beetle?

Fascinating. What about reflectivity of infrared and ultraviolet light? Has this been measured? Maybe this substance would be a good solar barrier for satellites.

@varnull6120

5 ай бұрын

It's emissive in the IR spectrum, like most things, with the added property of it's emission being primarily in the atmospheric gap ( 11:54 ). I would imagine on reflectivity alone it might be pretty good but a better mirror would do a better job probably - the reason it's useful on earth is because there's not many materials that can pierce through the blanket of our atmosphere, and this benefit wouldn't apply as much if at all in space (there's some atmosphere up there in low earth orbit and it causes drag but i don't think it'd be enough to be insulating in a way where this would matter).

@lubricustheslippery5028

12 күн бұрын

The trick is that the material have to be good at radiate heat/infrared not reflect it. I think the video missed that important part that the tricky part is not just to reflect visible light, it have to at the same time be good at radiate heat. A shiny metal surface is good at reflecting visible light and is bad at radiating heat so it get hot in the sun.

All very good, and I suppose the material will also have a very low emission index for winter time, or doesn't it work in the infrared? For winter time, that would be important in order not to cool the house down. Also, in countries with a lot of sunlight all year round, like Greece where I live, where it is sunny very frequently during winter, sunlight wil heat houses quite a lot, saving money in heating costs. One must take into account the performance all year round.

That manufacturing process, and the beetles themselves all look like the cross section of a tantalum capacitor. I would not be surprised there was electrical storage applications related to this product.

Excellent! the super hydrophilic nature might be a show stopper but it is cool to know it exist as well as the Barium sulfide coating

The formation of structural colour is incredible, you ought to talk to my old colleagues at the Nadeau lab, because in butterflies at least it seems the unmixing may be mediated by mechanical strain!

So this´ the best mirror availabe?! As crazy as it might sound but you could use it as the best parabolic mirror to heat up things as well. Science for the win.

@akauppi2

5 ай бұрын

As I understand it, this material reflects the beams in rather random angles. There are often multiple reflections, vs. a mirror doing just one.

Basically that beetle could be in direct sun in death valley, hottest day of the year, and just be like "Feels fine"

There is another practical use this material could have: thermal solar. Since it reflects 99% of the light compared to around 85% for standard mirrors, this results in a 10% increase in reflected sunlight, and therefore heat energy produced.

So, if it I'd so highly water absorbent I have two questions: 1.) How can a facade of a building kept clean 2.) Will this material be constantly damp? 3.) In a typical City environment, how long can this stuff function until it's pores are polluted? Will it still function when wet and dirty?

2:12 I'm impressed, the nano holes shown are roughly tuned to the full wavelength of blue light; just a bit under 500nm. Further in, I can see molding middle Dalton weight plastics, such as PVC or Polyethelene into these forms, cheaply and quickly

Interesting but I fear it will prove to be ineffective in most environments. After a year or so, any external surface is covered in dust and the porous nature of this super-material will probably invite dust particles to stick even better. I am looking forward to research into how materials like this can be made dust-repelling or self-cleaning so that they remain effective over many years.

@mkperez7465

5 ай бұрын

The porosity is in the photonic range, the outer layer could likely be coated and only reduce slightly its effectiveness.

@ManfredBartz

5 ай бұрын

@@mkperez7465 Soot particles (10..100nm) will fit easily into the pores of the material. Coatings have less than 100% transmissivity and they have porosity of their own. Also, the light needs to pass twice through any coating.

@sznikers

5 ай бұрын

​@@ManfredBartzif they dont find way to seal surface layer it will be useless. Outside environment is full of particles of all sizes and you wont be able to clean 3D structure, but the biggest problem is that its hydrophilic, they most likely pulled that whole "oh look it wont have leidenfrost effect" thing out of their pocket to make it sound like feature when its a flaw. Think about it, it will be damper than surrounding environment from all the water inside so invitation for mold and moss, those will actively destroy that surface (both color by filling gaps and damage physically, think moss eroding rock). On top of that if water inside freezes that tile is done for. So any place where temperature drops a single degree under 0° for a single night a year is out of question as a potential market. Places where temperatures never drop below zero are... humid parts of the world where molds, mosses and whatever else loves to grow 😂

@BioTechproject27

5 ай бұрын

@@sznikers You could just coat them with e.g. a simple polyethylene layer, as any protective layer should ideally be relatively infrared transparent. During a fire the PE would melt/pyrolise, opening it up to adsorb the water.

@sznikers

5 ай бұрын

@@BioTechproject27 polymers will get destroyed by UV Also dont focus on that leidenfrost effect, thats a decoy to focus conversation on it. Nobody is resigning from ceramic tiles in building industry cause they have leidenfrost effect, that's ridiculous.

Amazing material. One characteristic that needs to be investigated is how resistant is this material to UV light? Does the sun's UV break it down or yellow it?

Combine this in a way with the darkest black material and you have made a device that continuously grabs condensation from the air and collects it using passive energy. In four season climates you would have to create a roof system that would slide the white material onto the black material and reverse when the season changes. One pocketing the other would achieve this on a roof.

From an artist point of view, it would be interesting to experiment with this ultra white in contrast with the new ultra black paints coming out.

@JJayzX

5 ай бұрын

Check out Tech Ingredients, he shows how to make an ultra white that does sub-ambient cooling as well.

@DFPercush

5 ай бұрын

@@JJayzX also NighthawkInLight, they've been back and forth on this idea

Beautiful.

My second question- when do the researchers expect this material to be ready to market?

nighthawk in light and tech ingredients have some open source research videos on a very similar concept right here on youtube! its a bit of a project, but its even doable/verifiable at home, if not scale-viable yet, as far as i know

Easy answer is to spend £15k on external 150mm cladding with a nice render over it = blocks solar heating in the summer so we have to run the heating now as it's so cold in the house as the walls never heat up any more .....Not sure iff there is a benefit in the winter as the vented roof draws all the heat out ! ... So much for " greeness " and saving energy .

A delightful example of the power of bio-inspired research!

a cinema screen with that material would be excellent

I suspect the super hydrophilicity is actually a problem in winter though, right? It presumably means this material deteriorates particularly badly in frost conditions. So then it'd only really be useful for regions where it never freezes, or you have to have mechanisms in place to replace these in that time, which obviously also makes sense for the reason that you don't want heat to escape in that time either.

@BioTechproject27

5 ай бұрын

You could just coat them with a simple polyethylene layer. Also they need to be protected from rain and dust regardless and the coating would ideally be relatively infrared transparent. During a fire the PE would melt/pyrolise, opening it up to adsorb the water.

@Kram1032

5 ай бұрын

@@BioTechproject27 part of that is a tricky thing to do if you are trying to use them as roof shingles

Three common reflective roof coatings are silicone, acrylic, and aluminum. They all get dirty and become less reflective.

Sounds good, but over time won't those holes that don't allow the waves to penetrate thermal heat plug up. Also absorbing water could create algae growth...

@CyberiusT

5 ай бұрын

Plug with what? The sand grains etc that make up general dirt are way bigger than those pores. Algal cells are also bigger than those pores. Really, that should be fairly obvious, since the beetles can't clean that chitin better than just wiping the surface, and they're not soiled or covered in slime either. I'm more concerned with that chemical cocktail needed to make it, and the durability of the product. It's not going to be useful if the stuff is deadly to produce, causes something like asbestosis/silicosis as it breaks down in the environment, or has a service life of a year.

@steveo5295

5 ай бұрын

Well I guess I waste my money at a car wash from the grime and dirt buildup even though it's parked under a carport and only used two to three times a month. The beetles 🪲 must go to the same car wash I go to I've seen a couple of punch bugs there...

@CyberiusT

5 ай бұрын

@@steveo5295 You are talking about surface adhesion, which is more down to static electricity and molecular polarity. I was talking about particles physically filling the pores of that 'sponge'. On re-reading, it's unclear to me which kind of 'plugging up' you meant, so I'll use the more generous one and bow out with an apology.

there's this science-ted-cruz youtuber whose name I forgot who has made a home-made version of this. I'm not sure about the exact reflectivity, but he has achieved sub-ambient temperatures of at least 2°C

This - is hard core. I imagine the pores are significantly smaller than most dust particles, and it could even be covered with a thin layer of glass(?) to keep the pores from getting plugged by dirt, water, etc.

The irony is that even before materials like this we have known forever and a day that painting rooftops white would greatly impact the heat island effect of urban areas, cities, etc. yet about the only rooftops that are painted white are commercial buildings. People love to point this idea of white paint, etc. to help with heat island and / or building insulation and HVAC efficiency but white rooftops that you can see are the first thing that people would literally complain about in a neighborhood. It is like when some people demand clean energy but they are also ripe with NIMBY (not in my backyard).

I would love to experiment with this stuff for vapor transit and thermal stability under freeze thaw cycles. The problem with white roofs is condensation under the roof due to vapor passage from building interiors. This results is frost formation at the transit boundary and potential rot of organic framing and soluble surfacing with thawing of that frost line.

The big question is how well it would do the job of roofing shingles. If water is drawn into it's structure, how will that affect it as a shingle? Will is last in the weather?

A ceramic coating on a metal roof would make for a very interesting product. Although as others have pointed out, its porosity is probably a risk. If it actually could come to production as a useful roof, I'd probably buy some.

As Dr Miles was talking, all I could think of was using as much roof area as feasible for solar panels. I can see value for this product, if it's proven, as cladding, considering the flammability of materials which have proved dangerous. In addition, too many academics model their videos on an academic seminar.

From what I have heard, in Greece white roofs are mandatory and of course look beautiful against the blue Mediterranean.

As an electrical engineer I can see one major issue with putting this on buildings. If this is really some kind of randomly porous aluminum, then I worry about it blocking cell signals. Aluminum like other metals is very good at this, and a random pattern would be extremely effective at this for the exact same reasons it reflects light so good. So from what I can see it will reduce your energy consumption, but at the cost of making your phone not work inside. In today’s society, I don’t think people will take that trade off.

@ironrod1979

12 күн бұрын

As long as the wi-fi works I'll happily pay less for my AC use.

Cooling is all very well when ambient temperature is high otherwise it's a problem as buildings will need more energy to heat them!

Being hydrophilic would also mean the intrusion of molds into the material/ easy attachment to the surface.

I would love to have my car painted with this material, at least on hot summer days.

This would work well as a solar panel backing, where efficiently is based on how much interaction the cell receives.

Can you do a video about how and why LIGO made a photon flux capacitor? That just blows my mind. A capacitor stores energy in the form of an electric field. An inductor stores energy in the form of a magnetic field. But LIGO stores energy in the form of an electromagnetic field.

Energy efficient buildings: IN HOT CLIMATE! Here on the other hand, we want to soak up as much of the suns heat as we can... 10% global energy use is cooling. 40% is heating...

2:42 I've heard of constructive and destructive interference, but "deconstructive" is a new one for me (and for Google, which just points to results for "destructive")

Could this be used to reflect light back onto PV?

the only problem would be dirt deposit over time on the tiles, which will reduce its effectiveness and probably will need maintenance over time to keep effectiveness at 100%, so the question is how much effectiveness will really be on average between the cleaning maintenance? also how the material will really fair against dirt? shame nothing of such concerns were talked on the video.

Great idea.and potenially cheap to produce if the PES and NMP are recycled. Are the pores small enough to prevent moss attaching itself or it being invaded by photosynthesising micro-organisms?

@BioTechproject27

5 ай бұрын

You could just coat them with a simple polyethylene layer. Also they need to be protected from rain and dust regardless and the coating would ideally be relatively infrared transparent. During a fire the PE would melt/pyrolise, opening it up to adsorb the water.

Could we use this as a base to reflect light to make solar panels more efficient?

@MrAdammace

5 ай бұрын

This is what I was wondering 🤔

Amazing content

Much needed even all the way up here in Germany. Heatwaves are really interruptive to people's temporary and long term health. We're reaching a desperate level as people don't want to install ACs, yet no one seem to be willing to explore alternative solutions for the mass. This technology shouldn't necessarily start in hot climate countries.

Given last year, and the global heat of this year so far, definitely need this sooner than later :(

Waiting for the @Nighthawkinlight home DIY version of this material tutorial video soon :-)

For a couple of years or more I’ve been wondering why we don’t use use highly reflective white surfaces to cool buildings well obviously it’s because it doesn’t do as good as job as we’d like it too would solve that problem

Great video :)

need a comparison vid between this tech (structural color reflectivity) vs. "space reflective" materials as beautifully covered by @Nighthawkinlight

@morgan0

5 ай бұрын

especially since he has been focused on reflection that will pass through the atmosphere and cool more efficiently as a result. maybe they could be combined idk

@morgan0

5 ай бұрын

oh it did get mentioned, so it does already emit in a high transmission wavelength band

@dfgdfg_

12 күн бұрын

So it's comparable to nighthawk's material?

This is interesting Ben. It most definitely would help reduce costs to homeowners, making air conditioning more efficient without increasing a homeowner’s utility bills. Also, couldn’t this be used to create ceramics that reflect light back into space? If so, it might help slow down climate change, allowing us to have more time to battle climate change.

I can't believe that 4 months later this is the only video on this material on KZread. Or at least the only one I can find. Was it just hype?

The only question is how robust is it... if it were to be made into an exterior cladding for buildings exposed to the abrasives in the atmosphere how well does it stand up? Particularly when exposed to particulates that might fit through the interstices and 'gum' it up (i.e. the same reason nano-hydrophobics don't last long - they get loaded with particulates).

Because I have a house in an HOA and I wanted solar panels I was required to put on a black roof. Used a reflective underlayment and air gap, but still annoying.

If the material is somewhat porous to water, wouldn't that mean it is unsuitable for cold climates as the water would freeze inside the material structure and destroy it? Also wouldn't using this material in climates that have hot summers and cold winters mean that heating costs in winters would rise which would negate the energie benefits of not having too cool as much during summers?

It will also help the performance of the heatsinks used in electronics, applied as a coating. The rate of heat loss is higher than bare aluminium, isn't it? It will also reduce the heatsink's heating from the ambient air, by the sound of it, so it should be working more efficiently too. Very 'cool'!

@Kevin_Street

5 ай бұрын

That's a neat idea! It's the reverse of using it as an insulator. In your use case it would absorb the heat from the aluminum and radiate it out the other side...

@BioTechproject27

5 ай бұрын

Energy loss in electronics is mainly conductively, not radiatively(and these things are rather conductive isolators, due to the trapped air.). Also, remember, all objects will radiate heat back onto the heatsink, which is in the infrared, not visible. This coating is only effective for cooling things that are in direct sunlight. So you could use a roof of the building as a heatsink.

Really interesting, but what sets this apart from using Barium Sulfate nanoparticles like Tech Ingredients discussed in their video?

That superhydrophil..... sounds like a problem. If it retains water while it freezes it will be crushed to dust.

main issue I see is the pores getting clogged up by dust & algae over time, degrading performance. Might need some sort of sealing to prevent this.

just gotta do the analysis after throwing dust/grime/salt spray on there, and working in some abrasion...

is absorbing water good for regular use of a cladding or roof?

Sadly this wont work here where tempreture is 60 c so 5 degree is not much air conditioning is neccery unless we make more trees and adjust the housing wind tunnel like. Natural air conditioning

A well know issue with solar panels is there decreased effectiveness at higher temperatures, perhaps this could be useful in that application?

How do you keep a hydrophilic material like that clean?

How much better is the reflection compared to TiO2 what is much easier to produce... The reflection within Vis is not that interesting. The switch from Vis to IR is the most interesting part. So what is the IR reflection compared to TiO2?

Used with the newest bi-facial solar (pv) panels could create ~ 40% efficiency. What's your opinion?

@17leprichaun

5 ай бұрын

this would be a great use!

Possibly stupid question; if it radiates in an atmospheric band gap, presumably that includes CO2 and H2O absorption wavelengths. So could we cover enormous areas in this material to increase the albedo of the earth in those specific wavelengths to remove heat more quickly and offset some heating from CO2? Like ENORMOUS areas (maybe in sheets so we can roll it back up if we want to turn it off)

Every time I watch something like this I’m always left a little more confused. White reflects heat, than why when nasa or SpaceX want to insulate a structure they make them black to radiate heat away. I know I must be missing something. It would seem that this color tile could help space ships during reentry. Thanks for sharing your videos as I continue to ponder what I’m watching.

On day 1 you get 99.6% reflection. A week later you get a lot less, because the dirt absorbs before the energy reaches the high tech layer.

I think this is game-changing. Below ambient temperatures is huge. However I think that solar panels are way more effective here. Combining it with a heat-pump system does the exact same thing. Heat-pumps consume about 20% the energy equivalent to the amount they move, and solar-panels are already more efficient than that. You'd be net-positive with solar panels.

@BioTechproject27

5 ай бұрын

Sure, but the reason passive radiative cooling is interesting is because 1. It has pretty much no moving parts or parts in general that can wear out and 2. While heatpumps are efficient at moving heat, they do exactly that. They move heat. E.g. from the inside to the outside, which can stack very quickly in cities, making the outside much much worse (which can also drop heatpump efficiency dramatically. COP of 5 is ideal, most systems perform at lower values like 3 due to unintelligent and inefficient application)

How easily will dirt cling to this or fill up and clog the structure? Is the structure small enough so that common pollutants can't creep in?

@BioTechproject27

5 ай бұрын

You could just coat them with a simple polyethylene layer. Also they need to be protected from rain and dust regardless and the coating would ideally be relatively infrared transparent. During a fire the PE would melt/pyrolise, opening it up to adsorb the water.

Check out this guy's tests with similar. "Making Infrared Cooling Paint From Grocery Store Items (w/Novel CaCO₃ Microsphere Synthesis)"

We should compete to make this commercially available. So bet me doing it.

5cm of holo silk layer will, make insulated roof as hell for winter too.. uise water, towel and fan insteasd of AC.-.- inbcls..

The interaction with water will not make problems during storms?

The description of this beetle is such a perfect example of designed beauty, from the mind of the creator. Yahweh Eloheim. The most educated and intelegent among us, work 10x harder than required, just to tey to explain something without giving credit to the Designer, Creator.

Would this work in heat rejection in reactors and satellites?

Way cool!

hmmm...as a biologist i can tell you this....if you create a posus environment and make it wet EVERYTHING in nature will want to settle there...now if you ask how fast the material will be overgrown look at your theeth after one day of no cleaning....laos fine sand will be trapped there like gold in a pan.....the rest is no big deal...tiles are made of ceramic...witch is also hydrophobic and porus...thats why we glaze them

It sounds cool and all, but I have no idea how much better this is than what’s out there since you used Celsius instead of the far superior Fahrenheit.

What about caracteristycs of degradation? Don't it suitable only in dustless vacuum chamber?

I wonder how this ceramic would do if exposed to water, then frozen?

How does this material deal with dirt? Can dust particles become lodged in the gaps over time?

Ultra-thin radiation shielding, very cool

Hmm interesting. I see also a future for display technology. Wasn't it a great achievement to create blu LED's and aren't blue pixels always the ones to go first in Oled etc? If a butterfly can amplify blue light, it might be possible to use that technology to create blue and other colours.

Given it's hydrophilic, does that mean it would provide an unfortunately excellent environment for fungus or mold growth?

If water can go into pores, so will the dust, any kind of dirt or leftover minerals from evaporated water... I wonder what the lifetime of the color is.