Self-densified super-strong wood

Dafang Huang; Jie Li; Suiyi Li; Jianbing Hu; Zhiru Cao; Yang Guo; Yu Ding; Mingwei Zhu; Yanfeng Chen

doi:10.1016/j.jobab.2025.03.001

Volume 10 Issue 2

May 2025

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Article Navigation > Journal of Bioresources and Bioproducts > 2025 > 10(2): 199-208

Dafang Huang, Jie Li, Suiyi Li, Jianbing Hu, Zhiru Cao, Yang Guo, Yu Ding, Mingwei Zhu, Yanfeng Chen. Self-densified super-strong wood[J]. Journal of Bioresources and Bioproducts, 2025, 10(2): 199-208. doi: 10.1016/j.jobab.2025.03.001

Citation:

Dafang Huang, Jie Li, Suiyi Li, Jianbing Hu, Zhiru Cao, Yang Guo, Yu Ding, Mingwei Zhu, Yanfeng Chen. Self-densified super-strong wood[J]. Journal of Bioresources and Bioproducts, 2025, 10(2): 199-208. doi: 10.1016/j.jobab.2025.03.001

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Self-densified super-strong wood

doi: 10.1016/j.jobab.2025.03.001

National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures & Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Artificial Functional Materials & Department of Materials Science and Engineering, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China

More Information

Corresponding author: E-mail address: mwzhu@nju.edu.cn (M. Zhu); E-mail address: yfchen@nju.edu.cn (Y. Chen)
Available Online: 2025-03-12
Publish Date: 2025-05-01

Abstract

Abstract

Lightweight structural materials with high strength and toughness are highly desirable for many advanced applications. Wood, as a sustainable structural material, is widely used in engineering due to its abundance and excellent mechanical properties. In this paper, we report a self-densification strategy to develop super-strong wood by reassembling highly aligned wood fibers as functional units and self-densified without the need for hot pressing. The resulting self-densified wood exhibits ultra-high tensile strength (496.1 MPa), flexural strength (392.7 MPa) and impact toughness (75.2 kJ/m²), surpassing those of compressed densified wood and traditional metal materials like aluminum alloys. Notably, the self-densified wood exhibits uniform shrinkage in the cross-section while maintaining its longitudinal dimension. This characteristic leads to an order-of-magnitude enhancement in the overall mechanical performance of the wood, presenting a significant advantage over compressed densified wood. Such super-strong yet lightweight wood has great potential for application as a sustainable engineering material, replacing traditional structural materials such as metals and alloys.
- Self-densification,
- Mechanical property,
- Microstructure regulation,
- Lightweight,
- Wood

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Declaration of competing interest
Author contributions
Mingwei Zhu, Dafang Huang and Suiyi Li designed the experiments; Jie Li and Dafang Huang contributed to material preparation and most material characterizations, data analysis; Suiyi Li and Dafang Huang contributed to manuscript writing; Jianbing Hu, Zhiru Cao and Yang Guo contributed to material preparation and mechanical tests; and Yu Ding and Yanfeng Chen helped to review manuscript. All authors commented on the final manuscript.
Data will be made available on request.
Availability of data
Supplementary materials
Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.jobab.2025.03.001.
¹ These authors contributed equally to this work.

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References(49)

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