Nature has provided us not only the fantastic materials, but also the inspiration for the design and fabrication of high-performance biomimetic engineering materials. The unique anisotropic cellular structure endow the woods with outstanding mechanical performances. Up to now, it is still a significant challenge to fabricate the artificial wood-like materials with the lightweight and high-strength properties. Recently, a research team led by Prof. YU Shuhong from the University of Science and Technology of Chinademonstrate a novel strategy for large-scale fabrication of a family of bioinspired polymeric woods with similar polyphenol matrix materials, wood-like cellular microstructures, and outstanding comprehensive performance (including high strength, corrosion resistance, thermal insulation, and fire resistance) by a self-assembly and thermocuring process of traditional resins (phenolic resin and melamine resin). The cellular microstructure of the artificial wood was characterized by X-ray CT at NSRL, which confirms the very similar structure with the natural wood. This novel strategy provides a new and powerful route to fabricate and engineer a wide range of high-performance biomimetic engineering composite materials with desirable multifunctionality and advantages over the traditional counterparts, which will have broad applications in many technical fields. This work was published on Science Advances (2018, 4, eaat7223) and highlighted by Science News entitled as “This synthetic wood is as strong as the real thing—and won’t catch fire”.

The fabrication process of artificial woods and their pictures.