YInMn blue
Found by accident in an Oregon lab in 2009 while chemists were hunting for electronics materials.
- Made from
- Oxides of yttrium, indium and manganese
- Discovered
- Subramanian and Smith, 2009
- Bonus
- Reflects infrared, so it stays cool
In 2009, Mas Subramanian and his graduate student Andrew Smith at Oregon State University were heating oxides to explore materials for electronics. One sample, made of yttrium, indium and manganese oxides fired to about 1,200 °C, came out an intense, near-perfect blue. The name is just the chemical symbols: Y, In, Mn.
Its blue comes from manganese ions held in an unusual crystal arrangement. The pigment is stable, doesn't fade, resists acid, and is non-toxic, a selling point against cobalt blue, whose color its bluest form matches. It also reflects infrared strongly, so surfaces painted with it stay cooler in the sun.
Commercial use was slow. A US supplier got the environmental approvals to sell it in 2020, and artists' paint makers released small batches after that; the raw pigment is still scarce and expensive, as ultramarine once was. Crayola's 2017 crayon 'Bluetiful' was inspired by YInMn but contains none of it.
Changing the indium-to-manganese ratio shifts the color, and the same chemistry has since produced new greens, purples and oranges. Its blue sits between the app's cobalt and royal blue, and it carries on the long hunt for blues that began with Egyptian blue and ultramarine.
Swatches
- YInMn blue (approx.)
- Royal blue · a near neighbor
Colors
Sources
- Smith, A. E., Mizoguchi, H., Delaney, K., Spaldin, N. A., Sleight, A. W. & Subramanian, M. A. (2009). Mn3+ in trigonal bipyramidal coordination: a new blue chromophore. Journal of the American Chemical Society 131(47): 17084–17086.
- Wikipedia, 'YInMn Blue'.
Hex values are screen approximations. Every page lists its sources.