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Forests
Special Issues
Transforming Wood into Smart Materials: Innovations in Processing and Application
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Transforming Wood into Smart Materials: Innovations in Processing and Application

A Special Issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907) belonging to the section "Wood Science and Forest Products".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2026) | Viewed by 7094

Editors

Dr. Hao Guan

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Guest Editor
College of Forestry, Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University, Yangling 712000, China
Interests: wood cell wall engineering; wood sponge; wood-based functional materials
Dr. Qiuqin Lin

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Guest Editor
Research Institute of Wood Industry, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Beijing 100091, China
Interests: bamboo structure and properties; bamboo cellulose; sustainable bamboo products
Prof. Dr. Shanshan Jia

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Forestry, Sichuan Agriculture University, Chengdu 611130, China
Interests: wood-based functional materials
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Monika Sarvašová Kvietková

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague (CZU), Prague 16500, Czech Republic
Interests: wood modification; wood treatment; wood technology; roughness; natural fibres; biofuel production; composite materials; xylanases; pyrolysis; wood anatomy; lignocellulose degradation; renewable energy technologies
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Historically, wood has played a foundational role in human civilization, serving as a primary material for building construction, furniture, and paper production. Its abundance, strength, and natural esthetics have made it indispensable for centuries. Recent advances in materials science have shifted attention toward unlocking wood’s potential far beyond conventional uses. By optimizing its hierarchically porous structure and introducing new functionalities through nanotechnological processes (e.g., biotemplating, modification, cell wall engineering, and functionalization), wood is now positioned as a versatile, high-performance material platform with vast potential in diverse fields, such as energy-efficient building, green electronics, and environmental remediation.

In this Special Issue, we will explore the latest advances in processing techniques, material modification strategies, and the functional applications of wood or bamboo, aiming to offer readers a comprehensive understanding of how these natural materials can evolve in response to technological progress. This theme aligns with the global emphasis on sustainability and the rising demand for renewable alternatives to fossil-based resources.

We encourage the submission of original research articles and review papers on a variety of topics, including, but not limited to, the following:

  • Processing and modification techniques: Novel methods for wood treatment, modification, and functionalization to enhance properties such as strength, thermal stability, and moisture resistance.
  • Wood nanotechnologies: The integration of nanomaterials and nanotechnologies to create wood-based composites with advanced functionalities.
  • Smart wood materials: Wood-based materials that exhibit adaptive, responsive, or “smart” functionalities, enabling applications in areas like environmental monitoring, sensing, and soft robotics.
  • Sustainable wood and bamboo products: The role of wood- and bamboo-derived materials in creating environmentally friendly and sustainable products.
  • Advanced characterization methods: Cutting-edge techniques for characterizing the structure and properties of wood or bamboo.

We look forward to receiving your valuable contributions. 

Dr. Hao Guan
Dr. Qiuqin Lin
Prof. Dr. Shanshan Jia
Dr. Monika Sarvašová Kvietková
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Forests is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

 

Keywords

  • smart wood material
  • wood-based composite
  • wood nanotechnology
  • wood modification
  • bamboo
  • functionalization
  • sustainability

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 5543 KB  
Article
TASNet-YOLO: An Identification and Classification Model for Surface Defects of Rough Planed Bamboo Strips
by Yitong Zhang, Rui Gao, Min Ji, Wei Zhang, Wenquan Yu and Xiangfeng Wang
Forests 2025, 16(10), 1595; https://doi.org/10.3390/f16101595 - 17 Oct 2025
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1080
Abstract
After rough planing, defects such as wormholes and small patches of green bark residue and decay are often overlooked and misclassified. Strip-like defects, including splinters and chipped edges, are easily confused with the natural bamboo grain, and a single elongated defect is frequently [...] Read more.
After rough planing, defects such as wormholes and small patches of green bark residue and decay are often overlooked and misclassified. Strip-like defects, including splinters and chipped edges, are easily confused with the natural bamboo grain, and a single elongated defect is frequently fragmented into multiple detection boxes. This study proposes a modified TASNet-YOLO model, an improved detector built on YOLO11n. Unlike prior YOLO-based bamboo defect detectors, TASNet-YOLO is a mechanism-guided redesign that jointly targets two persistent failure modes—limited visibility of small, low-contrast defects and fragmentation of elongated defects—while remaining feasible for real-time production settings. In the backbone, a newly designed TriMAD_Conv module is introduced as the core unit, enhancing the detection of wormholes as well as small-area defects such as green bark residue and decay. The additive-gated C3k2_AddCGLU is further integrated at selected C3k2 stages. The combination of additive interaction and CGLU improves channel selection and detail retention, highlighting differences between splinters and chipped edges and bamboo grain strips, thereby reducing false positives and improving precision. In the neck, the neck replaces nearest-neighbor upsampling and CBS with SNI-GSNeck to improve cross-scale alignment and fusion. Under an acceptable real-time budget, predictions for splinters and chipped edges become more contiguous and better aligned to edges, while wormholes predictions are more circular and less noisy. Experiments on our in-house dataset (8445 bamboo-strip defect images) show that, compared with YOLO11n, the proposed model improves detection accuracy by 5.1%, achieves 106.4 FPS, and reduces computational costs by 0.4 GFLOPs per forward pass. These properties meet the throughput demand of 2 m/s conveyor lines, and the compact model size and compute footprint make edge deployment straightforward for fast online screening and preliminary quality grading in industrial production. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Transforming Wood into Smart Materials: Innovations in Processing and Application)
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11 pages, 1615 KB  
Article
Comparative Analysis of Wettability of Hybrid and Indigenous Poplar Strands
by Ahmed Altaher Omer Ahmed, Csilla Mária Csiha, Tibor Alpár and László Bejó
Forests 2025, 16(10), 1528; https://doi.org/10.3390/f16101528 - 30 Sep 2025
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 638
Abstract
The increasing demand for sustainable raw materials in engineered wood production has prompted the evaluation of alternative raw materials. In this context, indigenous black poplar (Populus nigra) was analyzed as a potential alternative, by testing its wettability, characterized by contact angle, [...] Read more.
The increasing demand for sustainable raw materials in engineered wood production has prompted the evaluation of alternative raw materials. In this context, indigenous black poplar (Populus nigra) was analyzed as a potential alternative, by testing its wettability, characterized by contact angle, determined by the sessile drop method, to predict its adhesion when used as strands for OSB and LSL production. Surface tension was tested on strands with a wide range of surface roughnesses. The results show minor but statistically significant difference in favor of black poplar, which has somewhat lower contact angle values (62.01°) than hybrid poplar (64.71°), based on 300 measurements each. The absorption of the liquid into the strands, evaluated on a smaller sample, follows a logarithmic relation with time. These results also show a slightly faster decrease in contact angle in case of indigenous poplar, compared to hybrid poplar. The results indicate that the adhesion of indigenous poplar strands does not present extra challenges, compared to the currently more frequent hybrid poplar strands. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Transforming Wood into Smart Materials: Innovations in Processing and Application)
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23 pages, 5849 KB  
Article
The Physical Properties of Surface Layer Thermally Modified Wood and Energy Consumption in the Preparation Process
by Jun Tang, Yisheng Xu, Jinrong He, Hui Peng, Zhu Li, Jiali Jiang, Tianyi Zhan and Jianxiong Lyu
Forests 2025, 16(3), 427; https://doi.org/10.3390/f16030427 - 26 Feb 2025
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1544
Abstract
Surface layer thermal modification (SLTM) not only improves the dimensional stability of wood but also effectively shortens production time. However, limited research has been conducted on how treatment conditions influence the properties of SLTM wood and energy consumption during the production process. This [...] Read more.
Surface layer thermal modification (SLTM) not only improves the dimensional stability of wood but also effectively shortens production time. However, limited research has been conducted on how treatment conditions influence the properties of SLTM wood and energy consumption during the production process. This study compared the physical properties of SLTM wood with conventional thermally modified (CoTM) wood treated at 185 °C, 200 °C, and 215 °C, as well as the energy consumption during processing. Samples were subjected to SLTM at three temperatures (185 °C, 200 °C, and 215 °C) two times (2 h and 3 h) and two target surface layer thicknesses (6 mm and 12 mm). The results showed SLTM improved dimensional stability, with the anti-swelling efficiency (ASE) after water absorption increasing by a maximum of 2.4 times compared to CoTM185-2h. Increases in treatment temperature, time, and target surface layer thickness all contributed to enhanced ASE. At 96% relative humidity, SLTM wood samples exhibited lower equilibrium moisture content (16.6% to 19.2%) than CoTM185-2h (19.5%). SLTM also reduced the total treatment time by 1.9 h to 10.8 h compared to CoTM treatments. SLTM demonstrated energy savings ranging from 215 kW∙h to 1567 kW∙h, resulting in a reduction in CO2 emissions by 73 kg to 729 kg per 1 m3 of processed wood. These findings suggest that SLTM provides a promising strategy for the energy-efficient utilization of plantation wood. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Transforming Wood into Smart Materials: Innovations in Processing and Application)
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19 pages, 7353 KB  
Article
Evaluation of Anti-Fungal Activities of Environmentally Friendly Wood Preservative from Thermal-Induced Lignified Twigs
by Xinqi Gao, Yafang Lei, Teng Sun, Yuanze Ma, Hao Guan and Li Yan
Forests 2025, 16(1), 119; https://doi.org/10.3390/f16010119 - 10 Jan 2025
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2822
Abstract
Enhancing the decay resistance of Populus tomentosa wood through environmentally friendly methods is crucial for improving its durability and market competitiveness. Lignified twigs (LT), typically unsuitable as timber due to their small diameter, are rich in lignin, which degrades during thermal induction to [...] Read more.
Enhancing the decay resistance of Populus tomentosa wood through environmentally friendly methods is crucial for improving its durability and market competitiveness. Lignified twigs (LT), typically unsuitable as timber due to their small diameter, are rich in lignin, which degrades during thermal induction to produce antifungal organic compounds. In this context, the objective of this study was to develop a lignified twig preservative (LTP) by thermal induction from the LT of Actinidia chinensis var. Jinyang. The antifungal activity of LTP under varying thermal conditions was analyzed, along with its chemical composition. Enzyme activity, cell membrane integrity, and respiratory metabolism in fungi treated with LTP were examined to elucidate antifungal mechanisms. Additionally, the decay resistance of LTP-treated wood was evaluated. Results revealed that LTP produced under N2 at 220 °C exhibited robust antifungal activity against Trametes versicolor and Gloeophyllum trabeum, attributed to phenolic compounds such as syringaldehyde, syringone, vanillin, and vanillone. LTP inhibited fungal cellulases, hemicellulases, and ligninases by 30%–60%, disrupted cell membrane functionality, and suppressed respiratory metabolism. Poplar wood treated with LTP demonstrated significantly enhanced decay resistance (mass loss < 10%). This thermal-induced feedback pattern shows great potential for LT in wood preservation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Transforming Wood into Smart Materials: Innovations in Processing and Application)
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