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Orlando Rojas<\/a> at the University of British Columbia, Canada, and his colleagues have invented a process that dissolves lignin, a glue-like component inside plant cell walls, and exposes cellulose nanofibrils, which are tiny fibres also found in the plant cell wall. The method involves a solvent called dimethylacetamide, used in the presence of lithium chloride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When two pieces of wood treated in this way are brought together, the nanofibrils bind to create what the researchers call a \u201chealed\u201d piece of wood. Although this no longer looks like natural wood, it has better mechanical properties. Tests show it is more resistant to breaking than stainless steel or titanium alloys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe get a mechanical strength that supersedes the strength of the original material,\u201d says Rojas. \u201cIt works because we use the inherent properties of cellulose, which is a material that binds together very strongly by something called hydrogen bonding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not only can wood treated this way be re-used to create new objects, but the treatment process can be performed repeatedly on the same pieces of wood to extend their working lifetimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is a really elegant way to heal wood, using a common cellulose solvent, recovering and enhancing the mechanical properties of nature\u2019s wonder material,\u201d says Steve Eichhorn<\/a> at the University of Bristol, UK. \u201cThe approach is evidently scalable and therein lies the challenge to take this technology to the next level.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rojas and his team didn\u2019t examine how much their method would cost if scaled up to an industrial level, but all of the techniques used are well-established. \u201cThe processes that we use here are very typical in wood processing,\u201d says Rojas. \u201cSo scalability is not an issue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n