Windows and solar panels in the future could be made from one of the best -- and cheapest -- construction materials known: wood. Researchers at Stockholm's KTH Royal Institute of Technology have developed a new transparent wood material that's suitable for mass production.
Lars Berglund, a professor at Wallenberg Wood Science Center at KTH, says that while optically transparent wood has been developed for microscopic samples in the study of wood anatomy, the KTH project introduces a way to use the material on a large scale. The finding was published in the American Chemical Society journal, Biomacromolecules.
"Transparent wood is a good material for solar cells, since it's a low-cost, readily available and renewable resource," Berglund says. "This becomes particularly important in covering large surfaces with solar cells."
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