Scientists in Japan make bright white without paint

Scientists in Japan have found a new way to make a very bright white. They do not use any paint or pigment^*1. The team announced the news on September 10, 2026. Their study was published in Nature, a science magazine in Britain.

The team is led by Professor Easan Sivaniah and Qin Detao of iCeMS, a research center at Kyoto University in Kyoto, Japan. Daiki Yanagishima of Tokyo Metropolitan University also worked on the study. Tokyo is the capital of Japan.

Today, most white things get their color from titanium dioxide^*2. It is a white powder. But some scientists worry that it may harm genes^*3. In 2022, the European Union stopped its use in food.

The new method is called DeepFoam Photolithography, or DFP. The scientists start with a common plastic. They shine ultraviolet light^*4 on it. Then they put it in a liquid called a solvent^*5. This makes many tiny bubbles inside the plastic, like a foam^*6. When light goes into the foam, it bounces many times in all directions. Light of every color bounces, so the plastic looks white. The white is as good as the white from titanium dioxide.

The idea came from a beetle. Cyphochilus^*7 beetles live in Southeast Asia. Their shells are very white, but the white layer is only 5 to 10 micrometers^*8 thick. The scientists copied this trick.

The method works with many kinds of plastic. These include polystyrene^*9, polycarbonate^*10, polysulfone^*11, cellulose acetate^*12, PMMA^*13 and PET^*14. It can print very fine pictures at 20,000 dots per inch^*15. The foam also pushes water away very strongly. The scientists hope it can be used in place of PFAS^*16.

The research was supported by JSPS, a Japanese group that pays for science, and by the Kyoto University and Mitsubishi Corporation Startup Catapult program.

1. *1 pigment: a colored powder that is mixed into paint, food or other things to give them color
2. *2 titanium dioxide: a white powder used to make paint, food and other things look white
3. *3 genes: the tiny parts inside our body cells that carry information about how we grow
4. *4 ultraviolet light: a kind of light that our eyes cannot see; it comes from the sun
5. *5 solvent: a liquid that can soften or melt other things
6. *6 foam: a lot of very small bubbles together, like the bubbles in soap
7. *7 Cyphochilus: a kind of very white beetle
8. *8 micrometers: a very small measure of length; 1,000 micrometers make one millimeter
9. *9 polystyrene: a kind of plastic
10. *10 polycarbonate: a kind of plastic
11. *11 polysulfone: a kind of plastic
12. *12 cellulose acetate: a kind of plastic made from plants
13. *13 PMMA: a kind of plastic
14. *14 PET: a kind of plastic
15. *15 dots per inch: a measure of how fine a printed picture is; more dots means a finer picture
16. *16 PFAS: a group of chemicals used to keep water and dirt off things; many people worry they are bad for health