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Biobased materials

Wood can be made superblack or transparent

Nature Reviews Materials volume 9, page 6 (2024)Cite this article

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Materials displaying near-zero light reflectance, coined as superblack materials, could revolutionize energy harvesting and optoelectronic technologies. However, the practicability of superblack materials has been hindered by their cost and mechanical fragility. Most existing approaches for manufacturing superblack materials are expensive and environmentally unfriendly. Now, writing in Nature Communications, Orlando J. Rojas, Bruno D. Mattos and colleagues report a simple approach that deconstructs woods, through metal-free wood delignification and carbonization, to create robust superblack materials.

For wood to be superblack, its tubular-like cellular structure must undergo modifications to allow low backscattering and multiple internal light reflections. However, it has been elusive to tailor wood’s nature-given architectures to meet these requirements. Carbonization — a conventional way to process wood — can introduce internal light reflections, but with a level of blackness (light absorption ranging from 97% to 99%) far below what is expected for superblack materials.

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  • Wang, S. et al. Wood xerogel for fabrication of high-performance transparent wood. Nat. Commun. 14, 2827 (2023)

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  1. Associate Editor, Nature Communications http://www.nature.com/natrevmats/

    Sunjie Ye

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  1. Sunjie Ye
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Correspondence to Sunjie Ye.

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Ye, S. Wood can be made superblack or transparent. Nat Rev Mater 9, 6 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-023-00635-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-023-00635-0

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