About us
Active and Adaptive Wood Materials
The increasing demand for sustainable building materials with advanced properties calls for the development of novel wood materials. In the Active and Adaptive Wood Materials group we address these fundamental challenges by pushing the boundaries of wood science and technology. We combine state-of-art wood modification methods with a unique philosophy mutuated from supramolecular and systems chemistry. We take advantage of the amazing variety of structures and compositions of different wood species to enable wood with new properties (“smart wood”) for the benefit of both the built and natural environment.
Cellulose Composites
The focus of the Cellulose Composites group at the chair of Wood Materials Science is enhancing the mechanical properties of wood and introducing new functionalities by chemical modification such as delignification, i.e. to remove the matrix component lignin while retaining the inherent cellulose hierarchical architecture. The cellulose scaffolds obtained are shapeable and have high cell wall porosity at wet state, which eases functionalization and densification to high fibre volume fractions resulting in a high performance natural fibre-reinforced composite material.
WoodTec@EMPA
The use of wood and wood products strongly depends on material properties, processing and application requirements. The "WoodTec" research group combines methodological competence in wood technology, biochemistry and machine learning in order to develop customized solutions for wood-based industries. In general, our focus is on expanding the domain of wood application.
Our activities range from bio-modification of wood and the formulation of innovative wood coatings and bonding approaches to the development of machine learning algorithms for wood science and industry.
In addition to basic and applied research in close cooperation with the wood industry, our group offers consulting, testing and expert services and actively participates in teaching and training of students.