Functional Wood Materials for Energy-Efficient Smart Building Applications

Reducing atmospheric CO₂ levels is essential for mitigating climate change and fostering a sustainable future. The building sector is a major contributor to energy consumption and CO₂ emissions, accounting for approximately 20% of global energy use dedicated to maintaining comfortable indoor environments. Consequently, minimizing the carbon footprint of buildings through energy-efficient materials is a pressing challenge for sustainable development, particularly in view of ongoing climate change.
Smart materials that can adapt to environmental changes hold significant promise for addressing the challenges posed by rising living standards and increased energy consumption. Despite notable advancements in the development of highly functional smart membranes, their large-scale implementation remains limited. This is partly due to the reliance on petroleum-based substrates and the complex, resource-intensive techniques typically required to manufacture these functional membranes.
There is a growing need for smart membranes made from renewable resources that can be produced through scalable fabrication processes. In this context, wood emerges as a highly promising candidate. As a renewable resource that stores CO₂, wood possesses unique mechanical properties and a hierarchical structure, making it an excellent substrate for membrane applications.
Research into native wood and wood-based composites has explored various applications, including microreactors, seawater desalination, and energy storage. This presentation will focus on utilizing the wood structure as a scaffold in a top-down approach to develop functional wood-based membranes. By making use of wood’s inherent directional porosity and combine it with structural and chemical modifications the wood scaffold can be equipped with novel functionalities. Finally, the energy-saving potential, the environmental impact, and the challenges of using wood composites for passive indoor climate regulation will be discussed [1-5].

References:
[1] Yong Ding & Tobias Keplinger * et al. "Janus wood membranes for autonomous water transport and fog collection." Journal of Materials Chemistry A 8.42 (2020): 22001-22008.
[2] Yong Ding & Ingo Burgert * et al. "Thermoresponsive smart gating wood membranes." ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering 10.17 (2022): 5517-5525.
[3] Yong Ding & Ingo Burgert * et al. "Passive climate regulation with transpiring wood for buildings with increased energy efficiency." Materials Horizons 10.1 (2023): 257-267.
[4] Oskar Leibnitz & Yong Ding * et al. "Renewable wood-phase change material composites for passive temperature regulation of buildings." Next Materials 2 (2024): 100132.
[5] Kunkun Tu & Yong Ding * et al. "Autonomous humidity regulation by MOF/wood composites." Materials Horizons (2024).