Transparent wood - a material for the future

Sweden is the country in Europe that can be said to be very much connected to wood and the wood industry. It has 57% of forest cover (over 2.6 billion trees) and is one of the largest exporters of timber and paper. No wonder researchers here thought they could get transparent wood. And they have succeeded. The resulting material - a translucent wood - is a very good replacement for glass and plastic, but is stronger than glass and more biodegradable than plastic.

Transparent wood from the Royal Institute of Technology

Lars Berglund is a researcher at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. He is known for his habit of taking ordinary materials and trying to discover new properties in them. Years ago, Lars created a much tougher and much lighter glass fibre composite material for the aerospace industry. He thought of applying the same principles to Swedish wood and trying to discover or transfer new properties to it. And he succeeded in obtaining a composite material he called transparent wood.

The process seems to be quite simple. He removed lignin from a very thin veneer in a process similar to making paper and replaced it with a polymer. The lignin gives the wood its brownish colour, so he has obtained a translucent composite with a transparency of 85%, which he believes will improve over time.

The advantage of the new material is that it retains the hardness of the wood but is transparent. The material is also as biodegradable as wood. Hence the idea that in the future such a material could replace glass or some plastics in construction, with benefits for both buildings and the environment.

Transparent wood composite at the University of Maryland, USA

Still a transparent wood composite was also obtained at the University of Maryland, USA. The idea is the same, to replace lignin with a resin that gives the wood transparency. In this case, after chemical removal of the lignin, an epoxy resin was put in its place. The process has been used in the past. The absolute novelty is that this was achieved with a 100 mm thick piece of wood.

Although it cannot yet be used, researchers assure us that in 2 years transparent composite wood will become a material with construction uses. The news has already got designers and architects dreaming. All we have to do is wait and possibly bet on who will be the first to use it: the Swedes or the Americans.

(source: fastcodesign.com)