Resilient
ceramic aerogels are emerging as a fascinating material
that features light weight, low thermal conductivity, and recoverable
compressibility, promising widespread prospects in the fields of heat
insulation, catalysis, filtration, and aerospace exploration. However,
the construction of the resilient ceramic aerogels with rational designed
multiscale architectures aiming for tunable physical and mechanical
performances remains a major challenge. Here, 3D constructed resilient
SiC nanowire aerogels possessing programmed geometries and engineered
mechanical properties are created via additive manufacturing.
The Young’s modulus of the fabricated SiC nanowire aerogel
lattices are tuned systematically from 0.012 MPa to 5.800 MPa spanning
over 2 orders of magnitude. More importantly, the customized lightweight
and resilient SiC nanowire aerogels show a low thermal conductivity
(0.046 W m–1 K–1). The present
work provides another approach to the design and rapid fabrication
of resilient ceramic aerogels toward flexible thermal management devices,
lightweight engineered structures, and other potential applications.