AEROGEL | THE MAGICAL SUBSTANCE

Aerogels

         Definatin :-  Gel  consists a microporous solid in which the diffuse phase is a gas.

     Aerogel is a artificial porous ultralight material derived from a gel, in which the liquid element for the gel has been replaced with a gas. The result is a solid with extremely low density and extremely low thermal conductivity. Sobriquet involves  frozen smoke, solid smoke, solid air, solid cloud, blue smoke owing to its pellucid nature and the way light breaks up  in the material

DISCOVERY

   Aerogel was first built by Samuel Stephens  Kistler in 1931, as a outcome of a bet  with Charles Learned over who could put back the liquid in "jellies" with gas without creating shrinkage.

Manufacturer

        Even though manufacturing  more  Aerogel at a time would escort its price down, the operation and materials solo come with a elevated price tag of about $1.00 per cubic centimeter. At about $23,000 per pound, Aerogel is currently more costly than gold.
      Aerogel   arrangement  results from a sol-gel polymerization, which is when monomers  react with other monomers to form a sol or a substance that comprise of bonded, cross-linked macromolecules with accumulate of liquid solution among them. When the material is critically heated, the liquid vaporize and the bonded, cross-linked macromolecule fixture is left behind. The result of the polymerization and critical heating is the construction of a material that has a porous tough structure classified as Aerogel.

Property

       Aerogel is a material that is 99.8% air. Aerogels have a porous solid network that holds air pockets, with the air pockets taking up the most of space inside the material. The scarcity of solid material permits aerogel to be almost weightless.

         Aerogels are good thermal insulators because they almost invalidate two of the three technique of heat transfer – conduction  and convection . They are good conductive insulators because they are composed almost completely  of gases, which are very poor heat conductors.  They are good convective inhibitors because air cannot flows through the lattice. Aerogels are poor radiative insulators because infrared radiation transferred through them.

Uses

Soundproofing:-  Aerogels provide the highest extent of sound attenuation of any material.

Thermal insulation:-  Aerogels provide insulation that is often better than standard insulation materials in a little space, while also manifest  better resistance to moisture breakdown.

 Energy storage and supercapacitors:-  Aerogels can feature added conductive, ion-transporting, or otherwise specialized-functionality particles. These added particles can mix with the continuously attach, yet porous structures of aerogels to create batteries and supercapacitors with simultaneously high energy density .

     Waterproofing:-  Aerogel accommodate  particles that are 2–5 nm in diameter. After the process of generate aerogel, it will contain a large amount of hydroxyl groups on the surface. The hydroxyl groups can cause a strong reaction when the aerogel is placed in water, causing it to catastrophically dissolve in the water. One way to waterproof the hydrophilic aerogel is by soaking the aerogel with some chemical base that will replace the surface hydroxyl groups (–OH) with non-polar groups (–OR), a process which is most effective when R is an aliphatic group.

Commercial use:-  Commercial manufacture of aerogel 'blankets' starts around the year 2000, mixing silica aerogel and fibrous reinforcement that turns the brittle aerogel into a long-lasting, flexible material. The mechanical and thermal properties of the product may be varied based upon the choice of reinforcing fibers, the aerogel matrix and opacification extra included in the composite.