Bioforte wood surpasses the strength of stainless steel

Advanced Materials

Technological Innovation Website Editorial Team - August 1, 2025

Above, an illustration of the formation of fossilized wood, which served as inspiration for the new process. Below, the project's strategy for preparing the new Bioforte Wood, using a biomechanochemical process. [Image: Ziyang Lu et al. - 10.1126/sciadv.ady0183]

Bioforte wood

Drawing inspiration from the natural processes that give rise to fossilized wood, scientists from Spain and China have developed a new type of engineered wood that achieves remarkable structural performance, superior to that of the best steels.

After carefully selecting the right combination of mechanical, chemical and biological treatments, the team was able to modify the internal structure of the wood, achieving a level of mechanical resistance superior to that of stainless steel.

The process can be applied to various types of wood. Thus, the technique establishes a new foundation for the development of ultra-high-performance biological materials, which could replace fossil-based materials (such as thermosetting resins or high-performance thermoplastics), which are proving to be so problematic from an environmental and social perspective.

Parts that are typically metal today were precision-crafted from the new wood. [Image: Ziyang Lu et al. - 10.1126/sciadv.ady0183]

The new engineered wood was named "biostrong wood" by its creators.

"Wood is one of the most accessible biological materials, but outside of its conventional uses, it remains underexploited for high-performance applications," commented Professor Erlantz Lizundia of the University of the Basque Country. "Our results show that it is possible to obtain materials with very high mechanical performance that, in turn, are economically viable and offer carbon capture capabilities."

The red star in the graph on the left shows the strength of Bioforte Wood compared to several other materials. On the right, details of the new super-strong wood. [Image: Ziyang Lu et al. - 10.1126/sciadv.ady0183]

Wood superior to stainless steel

To reconfigure the molecular structure of wood-forming components, the team used wood-eating fungi, combined with mechanical and chemical treatments.

In addition to giving the wood high mechanical toughness, it was also possible to increase its resistance to humidity, high temperatures and extreme thermal shock events (for example, from -196 ºC to 120 ºC).

Furthermore, when analyzing the tensile strength—the maximum stress a material can withstand before breaking—the researchers found it reached 539 megapascals, which is higher than that of stainless steel (SAE 304), an alloy composed of highly scarce, expensive, and potentially toxic materials such as chromium and nickel. This mark is also higher than that of densified wood, which had already surpassed the strength of metals .

While further experiments are needed to scale up the processes and test them on other types of natural materials, the team's progress represents a significant step forward in the development of circular and sustainable materials that could replace non-renewable and polluting materials currently used in many structural applications.

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