December 25, 1402 at 10:26
Researchers at the University of Maryland have made ieresting advances in the production of transpare wood, which can be used to produce mobile screens and other devices.
Wood is a key resource for construction, fuel and furniture production, particularly valued for its adaptability, renewability and visual appeal. Nevertheless, new applications for wood are emerging as new methods are developed to fine-tune the optical, thermal, mechanical, and ionic transport properties of materials through chemical and physical changes in the inherely porous structure and chemical composition.
To achieve this goal, researchers have developed innovative strategies to modify wood structure in rece years and iegrate it with new capabilities. Such advances pave the way for the poteial replaceme of conveional, non-renewable, petroleum-based materials in various industries, including automotive, energy storage, construction, and environmeal remediation.
This is a change of direction from the traditional areas of construction and paper industries to wood. Now transpare wood can be used to make mobile screens as well as flexible and bright devices. In addition, it can be used in structural elemes such as windows that have the ability to change color.
Advances in the production of transpare types of wood
By removing pigmes from pla cells, Zingfried Frink succeeded in creating transpare wood; A process that he has described in a specialized magazine related to wood. For more than a decade, Fink's discovery was the only definitive way to produce transpare wood uil another scieist at Sweden's KTH Royal Institute of Technology came up with a new method, Ars Technica reports.
Simultaneously, another group of researchers led by Liang Binghu from the University of Maryland was actively involved in advancing the project of making transpare wood through direct engineering of natural wood.
The wood consists of numerous small vertical channels that look like a bundle of straw tightly fastened with glue. These tubular cells play a role in transporting water and nutries inside the tree. After the tree is harvested, the moisture evaporates and air holes remain.
According to Ars Technica, to produce transpare wood, scieists must first change or remove the glue called “lignin”. This glue connects the bundles of cells and transfers the earthy brown color to the trunks and branches. After the lignin is removed, a milky white framework of hollow cells remains.
At this poi the resulting framework remains opaque because the cell walls refract light differely than the air inside the cells, a characteristic known as the refractive index. To achieve clear wood, the air chambers are filled with a material such as epoxy resin that bends light to the same degree as the cell walls, making the wood transpare.
Various properties and other applications
Research teams working on the Transpare Wood project developed an energy-efficie, light-harvesting building material. They follow two main steps to make it, removing the light-absorbing lignin and then filling the wood with an epoxy-like polymer that matches the refractive index.
This clear wood has about 80% light haze, allowing more than 85% light to pass through. This wood can let in sunlight without causing glare, which leads to energy savings and easy lighting of closed spaces. This type of wood also has strong mechanical iegrity (about 100 MPa), absorbs impact energy effectively, and is highly flexible, addressing safety concerns associated with glass materials.
Additionally, clear wood is a better insulator than glass, poteially helping buildings retain or dissipate heat. During this process, Ho and his team used polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), a polymer commonly found in adhesives and food packaging, to inject wooden skeletons. This resulted in transpare wood with a heat conduction rate five times lower than that of glass.
Berglund and his team also discovered a way to advance smart window technology, capable of transitioning between transparency and tied modes to corol views or block sunlight. According to ARS Technica, their method involved layering an electrochromic polymer (with the ability to change color through electricity) between layers of transpare wood coated with an electrode polymer to conduct electricity. Scieists now aim to increase the environmeal compatibility of clear wood to minimize the use of harmful chemicals and fossil-based polymers in its production.
