Hanover Seminar Series: Orlando Rojas

Описание: Gelation–Dehydration Strategies for Functional
Wood-Based Materials


Water plays a central yet paradoxical role in wood-based materials: it enables mobility, assembly, and reconfiguration, but must ultimately be removed to fix structure and performance. This presentation shows how water-mediated gelation and dehydration can be used as a unifying strategy to design functional materials from wood, fibers, and nanocellulosic systems.

Across examples spanning paper, films, filaments, and bulk wood, controlled interactions with water regulate hydration, plasticization, interfacial adhesion, and network compliance, enabling enhanced strength, extensibility, healing, densification, and thermal insulation. Selective delignification, oxidation, and dehydration promote self-adhesion in wood, yielding transparent and insulative bio-glazes and mechanically robust laminates. In fibrous and colloidal systems, water-driven gelation governs formability, consolidation, and co-assembly with particles for functional coatings, printing, and energy-related devices.

Together, these cases illustrate scalable, low-energy routes to sustainable materials by deliberately programming structure and function through water.