The deliberate manufacture of ZnO powder by oxidation of Zn
metal was pioneered in Germany in the 1700s and white pigment
was produced in France by these means from 1781 onwards [17].
The new pigment(known also as zinc white or Chinese white) competed
with “white lead” (basic lead carbonate) because it did not
darken in the presence of sulfurous gases and had better hiding
power [17,18], Fig. 1. In the Nineteenth Century two large-scale
processes, the indirect (“French”) process and the direct (“American”)
process were developed to produce ZnO. These are still in use
today and are discussed in detail below