New wood-based materials - context and examples

In the framework of sustainable development, wood is increasingly emerging as an environmentally-friendly material and has gradually becomes better established in the French industrial landscape. A number of still low-profile inventions come out the laboratories and find commercial applications. The latter enjoy strong political support and are very popular with the general public, who sees them as environmentally-friendly alternatives to conventional synthetic products derived from the petrochemical industry, and to those that consume large amounts of energy to be produced. After a short introduction dealing with wood as a source of new materials and products, a few examples of innovations are given in this paper. Structural materials, followed by functional materials, will be considered in the light of recent works carried out in French laboratories. (authors)