What Is 'Superwood'? New Material Strong as Steel Nears Mass Production
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
A new kind of wood, stronger than steel and created from ordinary timber, is approaching full-scale production.
The material, named "Super Wood," by creators InventWood, could provide an alternative to using tropical hardwoods from forests at risk of deforestation.
Why It Matters
Buildings and infrastructure are major contributors to global carbon emissions, primarily through the use of concrete and steel. By replacing these with a renewable and significantly less carbon-intensive material like Super Wood, it could be possible to make construction both more sustainable and cost-effective.
What To Know
In 2018, Liangbing Hu, a materials scientist at the university, discovered a way to transform regular wood into a high-performance structural material by altering its molecular composition.
Hu then licensed the technology to InventWood, a startup now preparing for its first commercial production run.
Superwood starts with regular timber, which is mostly composed of two compounds, cellulose and lignin. The goal is to strengthen the cellulose already present in the wood, according to an interview with Tech Crunch.
A customer selects a piece of wood from the lumber section of Home Depot on March 3, 2025 in Pasadena, California.
A customer selects a piece of wood from the lumber section of Home Depot on March 3, 2025 in Pasadena, California.
Getty Images
Superwood is created by chemically treating wood with food-industry chemicals to remove most of its lignin and then compressing the material to strengthen the hydrogen bonds between cellulose molecules.
The final product has 50 percent more tensile strength than steel and a strength-to-weight ratio 10 times greater. It is also Class A fire-rated and resistant to rot and pests, according to InventWood's factfile.
Super Wood is set to be produced in a $15 million factory backed by top construction investors, including Baruch Future Ventures, Builders VC, and Muus Climate Partners.
What People Are Saying
In a statement on their website, InventWood said: "Our patented molecular-level transformation process works by bringing out the incredible strength hidden in every tree to achieve up to 10-20x strength improvements, ultimately providing a strength-to-weight ratio up to 10x that of steel.
InventWood CEO Alex Lau said in a statement on LinkedIn: "We're not gluing or mixing wood with synthetic polymers. We're fundamentally restructuring and compressing it to create incredibly strong hydrogen bonding between the cellulose fibers.
"The results are remarkable: a natural material with up to 50 percent greater tensile strength than steel and 10 times the strength-to-weight ratio. It's Class A fire-rated and naturally resistant to rot and pests, while displaying the rich, lustrous beauty of tropical hardwoods—all sourced from undervalued domestic reclaimed trees.
What's Next
InventWood plans to launch its first commercial products this summer. The aim for production is to use low-value wood chips to manufacture structural-grade beams of any dimension that will not require finishing.
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