Transparent wood - the product of the future?

Company Woodoo was founded in 2016 by Timothée Boitouzet. After completing his architectural studies in Japan, Boitouzet, began researching innovative ways to adapt and transform a millennia-old material - wood - to today's requirements and needs. His mission is to transform the construction industry and building materials by replacing materials such as steel and concrete with wood.

Forests store carbon - about half the weight of dry wood is carbon - so using this natural, renewable (sustainably harvested) material in construction is an effective way to store carbon. Using wood in both residential and commercial construction could help reduce carbon emissions from the construction industry. According to a recent World Green Building Council buildings are responsible for 39% of the total global carbon emissions. The same report estimates that 111TPTP3T of global carbon emissions are generated by the materials and processes used throughout the life cycles of buildings.

But wood can also be used successfully for other applications. Boitouzet has started a project called Woodoo Augmented Wood* to integrate electronic components into tactile wood (touch-sensitive wood). The innovative, wood-based material, which is electrically conductive, will be integrated into touch-sensitive panels on car dashboards.

Tactile wood is based on an innovative type of product, which is obtained by removing lignin and replacing it with a certain type of polymer. The resulting product - which has been named transparent wood** - it is weather resistant, fire resistant and durable. The optical properties of the polymer mirror the properties of wood so that light does not bend când moves through the augmented wood.

So far, Woodoo has been working with the automotive industry, which is interested in its products because wood-based products are lighter and generate fewer emissions than panels made from traditional materials (e.g. plastic).

*The Woodoo project has been funded under Horizon 2020. Horizon 2020 is the EU's largest ever research and innovation program. It will lead to several breakthrough innovations, breakthroughs and world firsts, bringing great ideas from the lab to the market. Funding of €80 billion is available over 7 years (2014-2020) - in addition to the private investment and national public investment that this funding will leverage.

**Most of the articles and companies working on the development of this innovative product refer to it as transparent wood, but the material's opacity now gives it a translucent character. Research is continuing to achieve this property - transparency - so that the new wood-based product can be a genuine alternative to glass.