Recently, a team led by Lars Berglund, a professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology created a optically transparent material that may be suitable for glass production, even for solar cells.

Scientists started by removing lignin from wood via a chemical process. The material left looks white, but not yet transparent. The scientists then mixed the white “wood” with prepolymerized methyl methacrylate (PMMA) and successfully altered the refractive index of the wood, turning it transparency with up to 85% transmittance while retaining wood texture. The finished product can be made more translucent by fine-tuning the wood-to-PMMA ratio.

Although it isn’t the first time the wood gets turned into a transparent material, it has only been used in small scale to create things such as the substrate for wood-based computer chips. However, the new light weight material is well-suited for large scale applications. “No one has previously considered the possibility of creating larger transparent wood for use as solar cells and in buildings,” said Berglund. It’s attractive as the material comes from renewable sources. It also offers excellent mechanical properties, including strength, toughness, low density and low thermal conductivity.