NMR studies of wood and wood products

The research area, wood and wood products, is an extremely large field and it can be approached in a variety of ways. The diversity of NMR spectroscopy together with the increased knowledge and the development of the hardware and software possibilities during recent years provide many opportunities for characterising wood products. High resolution liquid state NMR as well as the NMR imaging are not reviewed in this context. One main topic under consideration deals with the solid-state NMR methods and the latest results from one-dimensional and two-dimensional solid-state spectroscopy applied to the structures of wood and pulp components. Water has been used as a probe molecule inside a wood, paper or fibre matrix. The response of water molecules studied by NMR gives information of solid material that is difficult to obtain with other methods. The results dealing with this field were considered as a second main topic in this review. The results obtained in the field have provided valuable information to wood product technology. The versatile application possibilities of NMR spectroscopy will ensure continued active research in this field in the coming years.