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of years of evolution. of being environmentally friendly, renewable, and lightweight.
The rigid wood cell walls consist of highly aligned cellulose In theory, the mechanical strength of elementary cellulose
fibrils embedded in the lignin and hemicellulose matrix, giving fibrils could reach 7.5 GPa, leaving significant room for further
trees essential properties needed for structural support, resisting improvement of bulk wood. Song et al. reported a densification
strong wind, and providing biological functions. strategy involving partial delignification followed by hot pressing
However, the microstructure of natural wood is not optimal to develop a super-strong wood.
from a structural material perspective. To balance mechanical The strength of the resulting material was improved to
strength with biological functions, certain mechanical properties 560 MPa, which enabled wood to compete with steel for the

are inevitably sacrificed. first time. Such engineered wood has attracted worldwide
The strength of natural wood is significantly lower than attention and promises to be the next-generation super-strong
that of steel and is often inadequate for advanced engineering and super-lightweight structural material.
structures and applications when compared to synthetic So far, super-strong wood is fabricated through mechanical
materials such as metals, alloys, and engineering plastics. pressing perpendicular to the wood growth direction. Such
Wood-derived cellulose nanofibers are considered as the unidirectional compression enables the wood lumina as well
most promising candidate for replacing some of these non- as the porous wood cell walls to collapse entirely, resulting

renewable and petroleum-based synthetic fibres (such as in a unique microstructure: the fully collapsed wood cell walls
carbon fibres and glass fibres), especially given their advantage are tightly intertwined along their cross-section and densely