Currently, transparent products are made of glasses or polymers, which are heavy, fragile or
require many chemicals in the process – resulting in hazardous wastes. Compared to glasses and
polymers, woods have better mechanical properties, long lifetime and can be naturally degraded. If
woods can be made to become transparent, it will create alternative transparent products which can be
used in constructions, storage, and other applications where mechanical strength and optical appearance
are both important. In this project, we propose to design a process to make transparent woods and study
effects of process parameters on properties of transparent woods.