Wooden windows anyone?
If you thought wooden houses were a thing of the past, think again. Swedish researchers are breathing new life into one of the cheapest building materials by making it transparent.
The new material, described in Biomacromolecules, could be used in solar panels, windows, even your walls. Facades that are semi-transparent could let in some light while protecting your privacy, the scientists envision in their paper.
“It's attractive that the material comes from renewable sources,” lead author Lars Berglund said in a statement. “It also offers excellent mechanical properties, including strength, toughness, low density and low thermal conductivity."
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Although transparent wood has previously been developed for studying microscopic samples of wood in the lab, Berglund and his team are the first to be able to mass produce the material. The process begins by removing lignin, a tough molecule that provides rigidity to the cell walls of the wood.
"When the lignin is removed, the wood becomes beautifully white. But because wood isn't not naturally transparent, we achieve that effect with some nanoscale tailoring," Berglund said in a press release.
By incorporating an acrylic material similar to Plexiglass, the scientists were able to allow light to pass through the wood. The resulting material is actually twice as strong as Plexiglass and could be a much better material for solar panels.
“Transparent wood is a good material for solar cells, since it’s a low-cost, readily available and renewable resource,” Berglund said in a media release. It could even increase the efficiency of solar cells because the wood’s haziness traps some of the light.
Next, Berglund and his colleagues hope to experiment with different types of wood and also improve the transparency of their material.
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