Scientists are using wood shields to foil noisy mobile phone users in theatres and restaurants.
Engineers at Japan's Iwate University coated wooden shields with minute magnetic particles.
They claim the material absorbs 97 per cent of microwave signals broadcast on standard phone frequencies.
Research leader Mr Hideo Oka said he chose wood because its cheap and can be seamlessly incorporated into interior design.
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He told New Scientistmagazine that treated paneling could be used to make rooms or entire buildings impenetrable.
The discovery came after exhaustive experiments with different coatings and thicknesses of wood.
They found that ferrite sandwiched between four millimetre sheets of wood worked best.