Chapter 13 - Biomaterial Wood: Wood-Based and Bioinspired Materials

Abstract

In view of the aimed transition toward sustainable societies, wood has a great future potential in being a renewable and carbon-storing resource, as well as due to its peculiar structural multiscale features and excellent properties. A useful approach for developing wood or wood-based materials with improved properties or new functionalities is to combine bioinspired materials science and wood materials research. For this, recent developments in polymer chemistry and nanotechnology can be used to transfer and apply the basic principles and mechanisms from nature for the fabrication of hybrid wood materials. In this chapter, we review the recent developments in the field and provide examples of our own work on wood materials synthesis and characterization, which illustrate the general concept and its future potential.