It sounds like the science fiction material, but in reality it comes from a laboratory in Maryland.
In 2018, Liangbing Hu, a scientist of materials at Maryland, had He devised a path To turn Ordinary wood In a stronger material than steel. It seemed that another headline holder that would not leave the laboratory.
“All these people came to him,” said Alex Lau, CEO of Wood for invent“He is like, it’s fine, this is amazing, but I’m a university professor. I don’t know what to do about it.”
Instead of surrendering, Hu spent the following years refining the technology, reducing the time it took to do the material for more than a week to a few hours. Soon, he was ready to market, and authorized Inventwood technology.
Now, Startup’s first Superwood lots will occur from this summer.
“At this time, leaving the first first -class commercial plant, so it is a smaller plant, we are focused on skin applications,” Lau said. “We eventually want to reach the bones of the building. The ninety percent of the carbon impact of the buildings is concrete and steel on the construction of the building.”
To build the factory, Inventwood has raised $ 15 million in the first closure of a round of series A. The round was directed by the Grantham Foundation with the participation of Baruch Future Ventures, Builders VC and Muus Climate Partners, the company said exclusively to TechCrunch.
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Inventwood’s Superwood product begins with regular wood, which is mainly composed of two compounds, cellulose and lignin. The objective is to strengthen the cellulose already present in the wood. “Cellulose nanocristal is actually stronger than a carbon fiber,” Lau said.
The company treats it with chemicals of the “food industry” to modify lignin in the wood, said, and then compress the result to increase hydrogen bonds between cellulose molecules.
“We could densify the material by 4x and I might think: ‘Oh, it will be four times strong, because it has four times the fiber.’ But in reality it is more like 10 times stronger due to all these additional ties that are created,” Lau said.
The result is a material that has 50% more traction resistance than steel with a weight resistance ratio that is ten times better, the company said. It is also a class A fire, or highly resistant to flame, and resistant to rot and pests. With a little impregnated polymer, it can be stabilized for outdoor use such as coating, terrace or ceilings. The first Inventwood products will be facade materials for commercial and high -end residential buildings, Lau said.
Compressing the material also concentrates colors. “You end with something that looks like these richer and tropical hard woods,” he added.
Ultimately, Inventwood plans to use wood chips to create structural beams of any dimension that does not need to finish. “Imagine that your rays in I look like this,” Lau said, holding a superwood sample. “They are beautiful, like Walnut, Ipe. These are the natural colors. We have not stained any of this.”