Preparation of sustainable transparent wood with glucose and phenol derived resin

Transparent wood (TW) is a novel biomass-derived composites with potential applications in many areas. In general, the preparation of TW usually involves two steps: (1) the delignification treatment of the wood and (2) the impregnation of the delignified wood (DW) with the resin. However, the resins used for the impregnation still need to be produced from traditional petrochemical materials, which does not fit the concept of green chemistry and carbon neutrality. In this work, a new type of the sustainable transparent wood (STW) was fabricated with the sustainable PG resin and the balsa wood. PG resin was obtained by the polymerization of the phenol and glucose, which could be prepared by the catalytic degradation of the lignin and cellulose, respectively. The obtained STW exhibited good light transmittance (45.8%), excellent mechanical performance (162.1 MPa) and thermal stability. In terms of the PG resin synthesis, a possible mechanism is proposed according to the characterization results.