An ancient quest for the perfect blue ended in a hot furnace in
OSU’s Department of Chemistry — totally by accident. A blue
pigment that is both safe and stable eluded the Egyptians, the
Han Dynasty and the Mayans. The French developed cobalt blue in
the 1800s, but it contains carcinogens. Prussian blue releases
cyanide. Other pigments break down in hot or acidic conditions.
So when Professor Mas Subramanian walked through the materials
science lab just as a student opened a white-hot furnace and
laid eyes on manganese oxide samples being tested for
electromagnetic properties, he stopped in his tracks. “They were
blue—a very beautiful blue,” says Subramanian. At nearly 2,000
degrees Fahrenheit, the manganese oxide ions restructure into an
unusual “trigonal bipyramidal coordination.” The intense blue
compound holds promise for a heat- and acid-resistant pigment
free of toxins. Many of its potential applications — inkjet
printers and automobiles, for example — could never have been
imagined by those earliest se