Scalable aesthetic transparent wood for energy efficient buildings.
- Mi R Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
- Chen C Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
- Keplinger T Wood Materials Science, ETH Zürich, Stefano-Franscini-Platz 3, CH-8093, Zürich, Switzerland.
- Pei Y Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
- He S Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
- Liu D Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
- Li J Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
- Dai J Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
- Hitz E Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
- Yang B Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
- Burgert I Wood Materials Science, ETH Zürich, Stefano-Franscini-Platz 3, CH-8093, Zürich, Switzerland.
- Hu L Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA. binghu@umd.edu.
- 2020-08-02
Published in:
- Nature communications. - 2020
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
General Physics and Astronomy
General Chemistry
English
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.
- Language
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- English
- Open access status
- gold
- Identifiers
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- DOI 10.1038/s41467-020-17513-w
- PMID 32737288
- Persistent URL
- https://sonar.ch/global/documents/237485
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