Transparent Wood Could Soon Find Uses In Smartphone Screens, Insulated Windows (arstechnica.com) 33
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Thirty years ago, a botanist in Germany had a simple wish: to see the inner workings of woody plants without dissecting them. By bleaching away the pigments in plant cells, Siegfried Fink managed to create transparent wood, and he published his technique in a niche wood technology journal. The 1992 paper remained the last word on see-through wood for more than a decade, until a researcher named Lars Berglund stumbled across it. Berglund was inspired by Fink's discovery, but not for botanical reasons. The materials scientist, who works at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, specializes in polymer composites and was interested in creating a more robust alternative to transparent plastic. And he wasn't the only one interested in wood's virtues. Across the ocean, researchers at the University of Maryland were busy on a related goal: harnessing the strength of wood for nontraditional purposes.
Now, after years of experiments, the research of these groups is starting to bear fruit. Transparent wood could soon find uses in super-strong screens for smartphones; in soft, glowing light fixtures; and even as structural features, such as color-changing windows. "I truly believe this material has a promising future," says Qiliang Fu, a wood nanotechnologist at Nanjing Forestry University in China who worked in Berglund's lab as a graduate student. Wood is made up of countless little vertical channels, like a tight bundle of straws bound together with glue. These tube-shaped cells transport water and nutrients throughout a tree, and when the tree is harvested and the moisture evaporates, pockets of air are left behind. To create see-through wood, scientists first need to modify or get rid of the glue, called lignin, that holds the cell bundles together and provides trunks and branches with most of their earthy brown hues. After bleaching lignin's color away or otherwise removing it, a milky-white skeleton of hollow cells remains. This skeleton is still opaque, because the cell walls bend light to a different degree than the air in the cell pockets does -- a value called a refractive index. Filling the air pockets with a substance like epoxy resin that bends light to a similar degree to the cell walls renders the wood transparent.
The material the scientists worked with is thin -- typically less than a millimeter to around a centimeter thick. But the cells create a sturdy honeycomb structure, and the tiny wood fibers are stronger than the best carbon fibers, says materials scientist Liangbing Hu, who leads the research group working on transparent wood at the University of Maryland in College Park. And with the resin added, transparent wood outperforms plastic and glass: In tests measuring how easily materials fracture or break under pressure, transparent wood came out around three times stronger than transparent plastics like Plexiglass and about 10 times tougher than glass. "The results are amazing, that a piece of wood can be as strong as glass," says Hu, who highlighted the features of transparent wood in the 2023 Annual Review of Materials Research.
Now, after years of experiments, the research of these groups is starting to bear fruit. Transparent wood could soon find uses in super-strong screens for smartphones; in soft, glowing light fixtures; and even as structural features, such as color-changing windows. "I truly believe this material has a promising future," says Qiliang Fu, a wood nanotechnologist at Nanjing Forestry University in China who worked in Berglund's lab as a graduate student. Wood is made up of countless little vertical channels, like a tight bundle of straws bound together with glue. These tube-shaped cells transport water and nutrients throughout a tree, and when the tree is harvested and the moisture evaporates, pockets of air are left behind. To create see-through wood, scientists first need to modify or get rid of the glue, called lignin, that holds the cell bundles together and provides trunks and branches with most of their earthy brown hues. After bleaching lignin's color away or otherwise removing it, a milky-white skeleton of hollow cells remains. This skeleton is still opaque, because the cell walls bend light to a different degree than the air in the cell pockets does -- a value called a refractive index. Filling the air pockets with a substance like epoxy resin that bends light to a similar degree to the cell walls renders the wood transparent.
The material the scientists worked with is thin -- typically less than a millimeter to around a centimeter thick. But the cells create a sturdy honeycomb structure, and the tiny wood fibers are stronger than the best carbon fibers, says materials scientist Liangbing Hu, who leads the research group working on transparent wood at the University of Maryland in College Park. And with the resin added, transparent wood outperforms plastic and glass: In tests measuring how easily materials fracture or break under pressure, transparent wood came out around three times stronger than transparent plastics like Plexiglass and about 10 times tougher than glass. "The results are amazing, that a piece of wood can be as strong as glass," says Hu, who highlighted the features of transparent wood in the 2023 Annual Review of Materials Research.
disposable ? (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's as disposable as the epoxy, which is to say, it's a bunch of microplastics.
Glass is almost endlessly recyclable back into more glass with the same properties. It takes almost as much energy as it does to make the glass in the first place, but at least it can be done. This stuff is just landfill.
Re:disposable ? (Score:4, Informative)
Somewhat [housegrail.com], depending on your definition of almost as much:
Glass recycling from cullet (furnace-ready crushed glass) doesn't save as much energy as other recyclable materials. Energy costs drop 2-3% for every 10% of cullet used in production, which can account for up to 95% of the material in a new glass product. Overall savings amount to a maximum of 30% of the energy needed for manufacturing virgin glass products.
If you could save 20% on your energy costs, wouldn't you find that beneficial?*
* I'm using 20% rather than 30% since that is an acceptable middle point for the decrease in energy usage.
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Not a chance for either application (Score:4, Insightful)
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Fiber reinforced plastic, I'm sure I've heard of that concept before. But the fibers being uniformly laid down and cross linked to each other does have possibilities.
The epoxy must have an unusually low viscosity to soak into the fibers that thoroughly.
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"We want something that's biodegradable but also lasts forever like plastic."
Carbon Fiber (Score:1)
and the tiny wood fibers are stronger than the best carbon fibers
Distracting and unhelpful. Probably comparing compressive strength of wood's cellular structure to CF which is used primarily NOT for its compressive strength, but for CF's tensile strength, which is far superior to wood's.
10 times tougher than glass
This may sound impressive but glass isn't all that tough. The reason glass is used for many phone screens is because of its hardness. Acrylic is also way tougher than glass and many phones used to use it for their screens.
My take is this is someone generating PR for their personally-excit
Finally (Score:2)
Sonic Screwdriver proof windows.
Clear craze (Score:3)
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I really like it when stuff is clear. It makes it easy to see when a gear has stripped or a component has turned into smoke.
IMO there are only four good colors for most equipment. Clear, as above. Black, goes with everything, hides grease, and blocks UV. White, reflects light and stays cool. And fluorescent, so you can find something if dropped in sketchy conditions. Silver can stand in for white, but it can make glare spots so I'm usually against it.
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And fluorescent, so you can find something if dropped in sketchy conditions.
If it’s fluorescent colored in the colloquial sense, but I fear if it’s UV fluoresced and I drop it in sketchy situations I’d go blind if I turned on the light.
Is it strong enough to build a large water tank? (Score:5, Funny)
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Sure, but not at the thickness and weight required for a spaceship.
For that, you would need transparent aluminum...
/. disappoints, no transparent aluminum jokes (Score:2)
I opened this article only for the Star Trek jokes. None. Disappointed and sad.
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Oh nvm, found the one joke. Please ignore. My error, feeling better now.
I want transparent ALUMINUM (Score:2)
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Great...invisible splinters (Score:4, Funny)
Not transparent, only translucent (Score:2)
If you read the company's website and look at the pictures, you'll see that this material is not clear or transparent. It's translucent, with an amber cast. Nice esthetics, but not suitable for a window.
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Might work for bathrooms and skylights though. Which would be niche uses.
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It's probably strong enough; it's strong enough to be a cell phone screen, apparently, or bigger windows. There's glass floors in various locations for the same effect. Plexiglass of sufficient thickness is also plenty strong enough.
I can't say for sure because of two reasons:
1. The production method for this is not yet set in stone, so you could have variations. Hell, I've read about 3 different methods for creating transparent wood. All the ones I've read about are strong enough, if made thick enough
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Or maybe used as a layer for making polished looking surfaces though I'd have to wonder how durable it would be and if you could keep it shiny.
The Microsoft Version (Score:2)