What’s brown and sticky, lightweight, flexible, stronger than steel, stiffer than Kevlar, and conducts electricity? Nanocellulose. Oh, isn’t actually brown and sticky either: it’s transparent.

Nanocellulose is a new wonder material that is simply plant matter that has been carefully smashed to pieces, and then reformed into neatly-woven nanoscale crystals and fibers. You generally start with wood pulp, remove any non-cellulose impurities (such as lignin) using a homogenizer, and then gently beat the mixture to separate each of the cellulose fibers. Depending on the exact process used, these fibers then form into a thick paste (pictured above) of needle-like crystals (2nm wide, hundreds of nanometers long, below left), or a spaghetti-like structure of cellulose fibrils (below right).

This paste can then be shaped, or used to laminate other surfaces — and when it dries, it has amazing properties. Nanocellulose is very similar to glass fiber or Kevlar — it’s very stiff, lightweight, and it has eight times the tensile strength of steel. The crystalline form of nanocellulose is transparent, too — and perhaps most importantly, unlike other wonder materials such as graphene, nanocellulose can be produced in large quantities very cheaply. In crystalline form, nanocellulose is gas impermeable — and when used as the basis for foams/aerogels, it’s highly absorbent.

In July, the US Forest Service opened the country’s first nanocellulose plant in Madison, Wisconsin. This is only the third nanocellulose plant in the world, with the other two being in Canada and Sweden. The CelluForce factory in Montreal is now producing a tonne of nanocellulose per day. After a ramping-up period of a couple of years, the US Forest Service expects to sell nanocellulose for just a few dollars per kilo.

Just so you have some idea of the industries that could be affected by nanocellulose, this is a list of who sent representatives to the opening of the Madison plant: IBM, Ecolab, Lockheed Martin, numerous companies from the pulp/paper industries, and various universities. The Department of Defense is also interested, as are automotive and medical device industries.

As far as electronics are concerned, IBM is probably eyeing up nanocellulose for use in flexible OLED displays, which it has been researching for the last few years. The DoD is thinking about new lightweight armor, and automotive/aerospace are no doubt interested in nanocellulose as a cheaper alternative to glass and carbon fiber. The pulp/paper industries are eyeing up nanocellulose as a way of reinforcing products or increasing absorbency (kitchen towels, tampons, etc.)

Our use of nanocellulose is likely to accelerate very quickly. Its safety — both during production, and in final products — has already been proven. Nanocellulose is so safe that it could even be used as a low-calorie food thickener (it is just concentrated plant matter, after all). For more uses of nanocellulose (there are lots), hit up Wikipedia.

Read more about graphene, and silicene — two more wonder materials