It won’t ever be your cell phone screen. Optically, it’s less clear than what we have, and while the wood/epoxy is “tough”, wood is not “hard”. It will scratch easily.
It’s an interesting line of research, but unless they can completely remove all visual traces of grain, etc, so that it’s very clear, it’s not going to be a replacement for glass in either screens or windows. And I’m skeptical that’s possible.
It would also be useful for blinds. My doggie is a bit of a little jerk and wrecked mine trying to look outside while they were closed. Wood blinds would likely be a lot more resilient
Honestly, I'd take a woody window to replace the clear glass overlooking the scenic parking lot outside literally any of the apartments I've ever lived in.
If a headline is phrased as a question, i.e. “Will X takeover the world this month?”, then the answer is always no, because if the answer was yes they would have written “X will takeover the world by the end of the month” which is a much more declarative and attention grabbing headline.
Similarly, if a headline says something “could do X” that means it won’t because if it was going to the reporter would have written that it “will do X”.
“And with the resin added, transparent wood outperforms plastic and glass: In tests measuring how easily materials fracture or break under pressure, transparent wood came out around three times stronger than transparent plastics like Plexiglass and about 10 times tougher than glass.”
Glass can be toughened up a bit by tempering, at a cost. It can be toughened up a lot by other methods up to being made bulletproof at costs both financial and in terms of compromises to clarity and adding a lot of thickness.
The question is whether ‘transparent wood’ can compete with glass in performance and cost.
“Glass” is not all the same. Gorilla glass is many times stronger than a window pane. Aluminum oxide crystals are called “glass” when they’re made to shape. Soda-lime glass is still called “glass”. “Glass” is an exceedingly poor metric to compare anything to, even other glass.
Given that industry likes deceptive trade names- ‘plexiglas’ for instance- transparent wood will probably be known as ‘lignoglass’ or some such nonsense.
and what about vs gorilla glass or sapphire? Y’know, like the kinds of glass already used on smart phones?
Soda glass, you could just about step on, on a flat surface with no defects, and break it if there’s even mild deviation. Being stronger than glass is a VERY low or high bar depending on the glass.
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