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Program ID: Innovation Anthology #139
Program Date: 06/03/2008
Program Category: Forests, Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology and Forest Products I

The term nano is quickly moving into the consumer lexicon.  We already have nano attached to anti-wrinkle cremes and mp3 players.    

And it won’t be long before the paper we write on or the houses we build are also nano-ized.

That’s the prediction of Dr. Ted Wegner of the Forest Products Laboratory with the USDA Forest Service in Madison, Wisconsin.  

He was in Edmonton recently as a panelist at the Alberta Ingenuity forum on Nanotechnology and the Forest Industry.

Dr. Wegner predicts nanotechnology will provide a whole new range of value-added and multi-functional products based on wood and cellulose.  

DR. TED WEGNER:   Like a sheet of paper, it can be an electronic device just as well because wood has piezoelectric properties which acts as a semi conductor under certain conditions.  And you can get it to be a calculator, and a computer, just like the ones we have on our desktops now.  We can have our houses so if they’re being attacked by insects or starting to decay, they’ll alert the home owner that some action needs to be taken to fix a problem.  
We can come up with siding that is going to generate electricity for the home.  

According to Dr. Wegner, innovations using nanotechnology will revive the forest products industry in North America.

Thanks today to Alberta  Ingenuity

FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY
I'M CHERYL CROUCHER
 

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