Material scientists at UMD have discovered a way to make wood transparent. Stronger than glass and more biodegradable than plastic, transparent wood has endless possible applications. Learn more: go.umd.edu/wtb
its bs they only have been able to do it to a thin slab of wood because its the easiest to drown out the color pigment then they saturate it with the epoxy ....so in essence its epoxy with the leftover fibers the wood had.....tho pretty much the strength comes from the epoxy and no longer any wood strength.
Actually, there was a paper published on the process. The basic premise is that they use a solution of sodium hydroxide mixed with sodium sulfite to remove most of the lignin from the wood, then another round with hydrogen peroxide to clean it (the peroxide reacting to form oxygen bubbles inside the wood is important as it helps remove the remaining lignin. Then they wash the result in alcohol and soak that in epoxy. Preferably doing the epoxy soak under vacuum to pull the remaining ethanol, air, and any other impurities out of the wood to make room for the epoxy to soak into the gaps in the wood left behind by the removal of moisture and lignin. They use the specific epoxy they do in the paper because it's fairly thin and thus fairly effective at soaking into the wood, though it's not a terribly strong or rigid epoxy. The result has most of the properties of wood, except that it's stronger, a better insulator, and it's color is a slightly cloudier version of whatever color epoxy was used (in this case clear). Sometimes with some defects from other organic dyes in the wood. The slight cloudy/blurriness is from the cellulose, and how bad it is depends on processing conditions and just how thoroughly the epoxy penetrates. Thinner pieces and better vacuums tend to do better.
Cambria Watson lol how so? It's basically opoxy but it degrades faster and you have to cut down trees for it anyway. So how is this a better building material?
Thank you wood researchers! A thing you could do to make this product even better is to cryogenically treat it. There is a patent on treating maple bats with cold to make them 27% stronger, and the idea of cryogenically treating building and furniture lumber is new and public domain at www.halfbakery.com/idea/Breeding_20cryogenically_20treatable_20wood#1610069938 You may already have -86 and -180 lab fridges in your building, pop in a sample, then see how it functions 24 hours later. 27% stronger is of course 27% less material and perhaps 27% more affordable.
