When I was 15 years old, my aunt told me to never dye my hair. “It’ll never be the same again,” she said. “You’ll damage it beyond repair.”
Although her scare tactic wasn’t entirely sound, there is some truth in it. Permanently dyeing your hair often involves harsh chemical components — like ammonia, peroxide, or paraphenylenediamine — that can make your hair weak and brittle, changing the structure of your strands in the process; it could even cause allergic reactions. The more you dye it, the more damage you create. This is just a necessary evil most of us who color our hair accept… but we might not have to.
Materials scientist Jiaxing Huang and his research team recently published a study in the journal Chemhypothesizing that a naturally black carbon material, graphene, can be used as a successful hair dyeing agent.