Does the phrase, "... the wood is then infused with a tough epoxy ..." sound a little hand-wavey to anyone else? "Our process uses no harmful chemicals..." except for the epoxy. "Takes less energy and time to produce..." except for the "infusing" process. I'm all for a new material. I love this shit to death, and can see myself trying something like this in my back yard this summer. But I'm also old enough to know when someone is talking about a "new process" it rarely pans out past the press release...
So... that's not even a veneer. That's like a third of a veneer. And if the goal is to take wood, shave it thin enough that you can bleach it, then layer it so you can gorge it full of resin, you aren't making "transparent wood" you're making "shitty FRP."Figure S1 shows the preparation process of transparent wood via this simple yet effective approach. First, ~15 ml of H2O2 [30 weight % (wt %) concentration] was brushed on a natural balsa wood sample (200 mm by 10 mm by 0.6 mm), followed by exposure to UV light (a UV lamp was used as the solar UV light simulator) for 1 hour until the natural wood color turned completely white.