This sounds like the object of scientific fiction, but actually comes from a lab in Maryland.
In 2018, Liangbing Hu, a material scientist at the University of Maryland, had designed a way to turn the usual wood into a stronger material than steel. It seemed like another title that captures the discovery that would not make it outside the lab.
“All these people came to him,” said Alex Lau, inventwood CEO, “he’s, okay, that’s amazing, but I’m a professor of university. I don’t know what to do about him.”
Instead of giving up, Hu spent the coming years refined technology, reducing the time it took to make the material from more than a week to several hours. Soon, he was ready to commercialize, and he licensed the technology in Inventwood.
Now, the first starting groups of superwood will be produced starting from this summer.
“Right now, coming out of this first trading plant of one type-so is a smaller plant-we are focused on skin applications,” Lau said. “Eventually we want to reach the building’s bones. Ninety percent of the impact of carbon from buildings is concrete and steel on building building.”
To build the factory, inventwood collected $ 15 million in the first closure of a round of series A. Round was led by Grantham Foundation with participation by Baruch Future Ventures, Builders VC and Muus Climn Partners, the company exclusively told Techcrunch.
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Inventwood superwood product begins with regular timber, which is mainly composed of two compounds, cellulose and lignin. The goal is to strengthen cellulose already present in the wood. “The cellulose nanocristal is actually stronger than a carbon fiber,” Lau said.
The company treats it with “food industry” chemicals to modify the linen in the wood, he said, and then compresses the result to increase hydrogen bonds between cellulose molecules.
“We can densify the material with 4x and you can think,” Oh, it will be four times strong because it has four times fiber.
The result is a material that has 50% more attractive force than steel with a force-to-weight ratio that is ten times better, the company said. Also appreciated with Class A fire, or highly resistant to flame, and resistant to rot and pests. With some saturated polymer, it can be stabilized for outdoor use such as siding, decoration or roof. The first inventwood products will be facades for commercial and high residential buildings, Lau said.
The compression of the material also concentrates the colors. “You end up with something that looks like these rich, tropical trees,” he added.
After all, inventwood is planning to use wood chips to create structural rays of any dimension that will not have to end. “Imagine your i-rays look like this,” Lau said, holding a sample of superwood. “They are beautiful, like Walnut, Ipe. These are the natural colors. We have not stained any of that.”
