Bharat Baruah never expected his woodworking hobby to collide with his day job in the chemistry lab. But one question kept nagging him: What if the future of windows wasn’t glass—or plastic—but wood?

It’s an idea that sounds like a contradiction. Wood, after all, is as opaque as it gets. Yet inside a lab at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, Baruah and his undergraduate student, Ridham Raval, have crafted something extraordinary: semi-transparent wood strengthened not by a centuries-old building recipe from northeastern India involving egg whites and sticky rice.

Their results—a flexible, durable, and biodegradable material—could someday offer a sustainable replacement for glass in windows, smartphone screens, and even solar panels.

Ancient Recipes, Modern Science

This isn’t the first attempt to make wood transparent for use in windows. Scientists have been exploring transparent wood for nearly a decade, primarily by removing lignin—the component that gives wood its color—and filling the resulting pores with synthetic resins like epoxy. These early methods successfully created strong, transparent materials, but the use of plastic-based fillers meant they weren’t biodegradable. Bharat Baruah’s had a different approach, one that emphasized sustainability and low cost.

The story begins with a childhood memory.

Baruah grew up in Assam, India, where homes built in the 1500s still stand today. Their longevity apparentlyowes much to an unconventional cement made from sand, sticky rice, and egg whites. “That was the cement in those days, and those buildings are still there,” he told NewScientist. “They’re still there after more than four or five centuries and it was always fascinating to me.”

Now a chemistry professor, Baruah wondered whether that same mixture could bring strength and clarity to wood.

To test the idea, the team started with balsa—a soft, light, fast-growing type of wood. They used a vacuum chamber and a blend of chemicals including sodium sulfite, sodium hydroxide, and diluted bleach to remove two key components of wood: lignin and hemicellulose. What remained was a delicate, paper-like matrix of cellulose.

That fragile framework was then infused with a blend of egg whites and rice extract. The filled wood was gently dried in an oven at 60 degrees Celsius (140 Fahrenheit). The result was a light brown, semi-transparent sheet with surprising resilience.

“It’s not 100 percent transparent, but it is semi-transparent,” said Baruah. “And it’s biodegradable.”

It’s surprisingly efficient

To see how their material stacked up against glass, the team turned to their workshop. They built two miniature birdhouses, one with a traditional glass window and another with a transparent wood pane. When placed under a heat lamp, the wooden window kept the inside cooler.

The finding hints at something big: transparent wood may insulate better than glass. That suggests a higher degree of energy efficiency that could eventually lower energy bills too and make houses more sustainable. An advantage that comes from the natural cellulose structure, which helps diffuse light while reducing heat transmission. Unlike conventional glass, it could keep buildings cooler without blocking out daylight.

But the team’s ambitions don’t stop at architecture.

In a separate experiment, they threaded silver nanowires through the semi-transparent wood. The wires gave the material the ability to conduct electricity, opening the door to applications in wearable electronics, flexible displays, and solar cells.

“In the modern day, plastic is everywhere, including our devices that we carry around. And it’s a problem when we reach the end of that device’s life. It’s not biodegradable,” said Baruah in a press release. “So, I asked, what if we could create something natural and biodegradable instead?”

While silver nanowires are not biodegradable, Baruah hopes to replace them with greener options like graphene. The goal, he said, is to create a fully compostable, functional material that could someday break down harmlessly in nature rather than languish in landfills.

Still needs a bit of work

For all its promise, the material isn’t ready for the general public just yet.

Baruah admits the transparency still needs improvement before it can rival the clarity of glass. Semi-transparency is promising, but people want transparent windows, nothing less. Scaling up the production process remains another hurdle. Although the team used only small amounts of chemicals, applying the technique to large sheets of wood would require careful environmental consideration.

Still, the project is proof that innovation doesn’t need to be expensive. “I want to send a message to my undergraduate students that you can do interesting research without spending thousands of dollars,” Baruah said.

For now, the birdhouse with its wooden window stands as a symbol—a tiny architectural experiment pointing to a bigger future.

The researchers present their results at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), held March 23–27.