Credit: Ryan Haines / Android Authority
- Researchers are working on creating transparent wood that would be a viable alternative to glass and plastic.
- Tests have shown that transparent wood is three times stronger than Plexiglass and 10 times stronger than glass.
- Transparent wood could also prove useful in other applications like smart windows.
Glass and plastic have long been the default for most device displays, but that could change in the near future. Researchers are currently working on transparent wood as a potential alternative to the two materials for smartphone screens and other uses.
A report from Scientific American details the work of researcher Lars Berglund of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and researchers at the University of Maryland (UM) on transparent wood. After years of experiments, the researchers see transparent wood as having a promising future in a variety of applications.