Aerogel- World’s Lightest Solid

Meen 3344Dr. Larry Peel

Claire Spiering

What are Aerogels?

• Diverse class of porous, solid materials where the liquid portion of the gel is replaced with gas, usually created from silica, carbon, or alumina

• World’s lightest solid material, composed of 99.98% air by volume

• First produced by Samuel Kistler in 1931 by extracting liquid component of gel through a process known as supercritical drying

Aerogel Properties

• Dry solid (not gelly)• Low density• Porous• Low dielectric constant• Low thermal conductivity• Low index of refraction• Can support up to 2000x

weight• Feels like styrofoam• Relatively brittle (snaps easily)• Relatively expensive to create,

getting cheaper

Creating Aerogel• After a gel is created the

temperature and pressure is artificially increased until liquid gel is in supercritical state

• Once in supercritical state, a rapid pressure drop sends the mixture to gas without damaging the 3D cell network that was there from the gel

Aerogel Uses

• Aerogel market predicted to be worth $1.4B by 2017

• High performance protective coating provides safe touch features on hot pipes (more durable than ceramic insulation now) in buildings and factories

Other Aerogel Uses

• Home refrigerator and freezer walls using aerogel for insulation to increase storage capacity (1/4” of aerogel insulation is equivalent to 3” fiberglass for roughly $2/ft2 vs around $0.80/ft2)

• Flexible aerogels for use in super-insulating clothing, tents, sleeping bags (expensive compared to traditional methods of insulation, roughly 2x cost for materials, about $4-5/ft2)

Works Cited• "MarketsandMarkets Publishes New Report: Global Aerogel Market

Worth $1,379.6M by 2017." Entertainment Close-up 12 July 2012.General OneFile. Web. 12 Oct. 2012.

• "New space-age insulating material for homes, clothing and other everyday uses." Space Daily 24 Sept. 2012. General OneFile. Web. 12 Oct. 2012.

• Pescatore, Peter F., and James Pidhurney. "Aerogel for highly thermally insulative coatings." JCT CoatingsTech June 2012: 46+.General OneFile. Web. 12 Oct. 2012

• “Silica Aerogel.” Aerogel.org. 12 Oct. 2012. <http://www.aerogel.org/?p=16>

• Wikipedia. "Aerogels" 12 Oct. 2012. <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/aerogel/>.