In a laboratory of the Kennesaw State Universityin Georgia, a silent revolution is being born. The chemist Bharat Baruah, together with the student Ridham Raval, has transformed a personal intuition into a research project with potential global applications: Replace the glass with semi-transparent woodbiodegradable and resistant, made with an ancient mixture based on sticky rice and egg white.
The idea, at first glance, seems paradoxical: wood, notoriously opaque material, as a transparent alternative to glass. Yet this vision has its roots in Baruah’s childhood memories. Raised in Assam, India, the researcher remembered how some houses built in the sixteenth century had survived for centuries thanks to an artisan “cement” composed of Sand, rolling rice and egg white. Those houses still exist today, and this architectural resilience inspired the idea of applying the same mixture to wood.
The team used balsa woodknown for its lightness and rapid growth, dealing with it in an empty chamber with chemicals such as sodium sulphite, sodium hydroxide and diluted bleach, to remove Lignina and migellulose. The result was a thin layer of pure cellulosesimilar to paper, then impregnated with a natural mix based on egg white and rice extract. After a delicate drying at 60 ° C, a material emerged semi-transparent, flexible and surprisingly resistantlight brown in color.
Transparent wood isolates better than glass
To test their properties, the researchers built two bird’s houses: one with glass window, the other with the new transparent wood. Subjected to a heating lamp, the wooden panel house remained fresher, showing that Transparent wood isolates better than glass. This effect is due to the cellulose structure, which spreads light and limits the transmission of heat.
The implications are enormous: more efficient windows from a thermal point of view, fresher buildings and less use of air conditioning. All this without sacrificing natural light.
But applications don’t end there. The team also integrated silver nanophiles in the structure of the wood, giving the material the ability of conduct electricity. This opens new possibilities in sectors such as wearable electronics, flexible displays and sustainable solar panels. Although silver nanophytes are not biodegradable, Baruah aims to replace them in the future with more ecological materials, such as the graphene.
Despite the promising results, the transparent wood is still in the experimental phase. The level of transparency must be improved: The current semi-transparency is a good start, but completely transparent panels are needed for commercial use. Also the scalability of the process represents a challenge. Treating large quantities of wood requires attention to environmental impact and resource optimization.
