Quantum Blue™

In the laboratory that discovered plutonium, dark energy and the acceleration of the universe, painter Olga Alexopoulou just created “the blue of the future,” a meeting of nanoscientific principles and art. Quantum Blue, a pure color reminiscent of the period of a day known as the blue hour; that brief twilight before sunrise or after sunset. The pigment is made out of quantum dots and is blue in both absorption and luminescence. It started as an idea by the painter Olga Alexopoulou and was taken on by Prof. Paul Alivisatos, an internationally recognized authority on the fabrication of nanocrystals, to be implemented by the nanotechnology scientists Arunima Balan and Joseph Swabeck of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California along with colour expert Maria Chatzidakis from the University of West Attica.

Quantum Blue

The pigment is made out of quantum dots and is blue in both absorption and luminescence. It started as an idea by the painter Olga Alexopoulou and was taken on by Prof. Paul Alivisatos, an internationally recognized authority on the fabrication of nanocrystals, to be implemented by the nanotechnology scientists Arunima Balan and Joseph Swabeck of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California along with colour expert Maria Chatzidakis from the University of West Attica.

After studying the colour blue from antiquity to today and travelling around the world to explore different blue pigments (for example, cobalt blue as it is used in the traditional way in Blue & White porcelain in the town that porcelain was invented Jingdezhen, China), Olga Alexopoulou thought that it is possible to create a blue pigment of the future, using nanotechnology and quantum dots. Quantum dots are inorganic nanocrystals made from semiconductors and they comprise a new class of materials. Quantum dots are very pure in colour which makes them the purest colour phosphors one can find.

The team has been working on the pigment for almost a year and are finally in a position to present it along with the first painting made with it. Quantum Blue utilizes the advantages of color purity and brightness of the quantum dots to bring a new blue light to the field of the arts.

Quantum Blue will be exhibited for the first time in March 2019 at the UltraSuperNew gallery in Tokyo.