Scalable aesthetic transparent wood for energy efficient buildings

Ruiyu Mi; Chaoji Chen; Tobias Keplinger; Yong Pei; Shuaiming He; Dapeng Liu; Jianguo Li; Jiaqi Dai; Emily Hitz; Bao Yang; Ingo Burgert; Liangbing Hu

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-17513-w

Scalable aesthetic transparent wood for energy efficient buildings

Nat Commun. 2020 Jul 31;11(1):3836. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-17513-w.

Authors

Ruiyu Mi^#¹, Chaoji Chen^#^{1

2}, Tobias Keplinger^{3

4}, Yong Pei⁵, Shuaiming He¹, Dapeng Liu¹, Jianguo Li¹, Jiaqi Dai¹, Emily Hitz¹, Bao Yang⁵, Ingo Burgert^{3

4}, Liangbing Hu^{6

7}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
² Center for Materials Innovation, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
³ Wood Materials Science, ETH Zürich, Stefano-Franscini-Platz 3, CH-8093, Zürich, Switzerland.
⁴ Wood Technology, Cellulose & Wood Materials, EMPA, CH-8600, Dubendorf, Switzerland.
⁵ Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
⁶ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA. binghu@umd.edu.
⁷ Center for Materials Innovation, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA. binghu@umd.edu.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Nowadays, energy-saving building materials are important for reducing indoor energy consumption by enabling better thermal insulation, promoting effective sunlight harvesting and offering comfortable indoor lighting. Here, we demonstrate a novel scalable aesthetic transparent wood (called aesthetic wood hereafter) with combined aesthetic features (e.g. intact wood patterns), excellent optical properties (an average transmittance of ~ 80% and a haze of ~ 93%), good UV-blocking ability, and low thermal conductivity (0.24 W m^-1K^-1) based on a process of spatially selective delignification and epoxy infiltration. Moreover, the rapid fabrication process and mechanical robustness (a high longitudinal tensile strength of 91.95 MPa and toughness of 2.73 MJ m^-3) of the aesthetic wood facilitate good scale-up capability (320 mm × 170 mm × 0.6 mm) while saving large amounts of time and energy. The aesthetic wood holds great potential in energy-efficient building applications, such as glass ceilings, rooftops, transparent decorations, and indoor panels.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't