Aerogels

Abstract

Aerogels are a class of open nonfluid porous solid materials known for their low density, high specific surface area, and accessible pores. This combination of characteristics makes them highly promising for a wide gamut of applications ranging from thermal and acoustic insulation, catalysts and sensors, adsorbents and absorbents, energy storage, carriers for drug delivery and nutrition, and scaffolds for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine to starting materials for carbon aerogels and porous mixed oxides. Aerogel technology has faced significant bottlenecks in its commercialization, since its discovery in the 1930s, due to limited technical information and processing expertise required for production scaling. This article presents the significant technology developments in the past 10 years, highlighting the paradigm shift in aerogel processing. Lastly, this article invites the reader to envisage and contribute to a new generation of aerogel materials and applications with the fundamental tenets of aerogel production and pore engineering.

Wetting of alginate aerogels, from mesoporous solids to hydrogels: a small-angle scattering analysis

“…Calcium alginate aerogels have promising uses in drug delivery, wound treatment and food preservation (Budtova, 2023;Smirnova et al, 2023). Alginates are linear polysaccharides usually extracted from brown algae.…”

Graphene Oxide/Polyethylenimine Aerogels for the Removal of Hg(II) from Water

“…In both cases, surface tension and capillary stress are avoided during drying. Materials commonly called aerogels or cryogels are obtained by using either supercritical or freeze drying, respectively [ 24 , 25 , 26 ]. The main disadvantages of the prepared 3D-structures are their extreme fragility and relatively poor mechanical properties, together with low structural stability when immersed in polar solvents, since they are obtained by non-covalent self-assembly [ 27 ].…”