A ceramic aerogel made with nanocrystals and embedded in a matrix for use in thermal insulation applications

Bob Yirka is a research scientist at Phys.org.

A group of researchers in China and the US have developed a new type of aerogel that can be used in flexible thermal insulation material applications. The group describes how they made their aerogel in a paper published in Nature.

Aerogels made with ceramic materials work well as thermal insulators, because of their low densities. Flexible material applications, such as suits for firefighters, can't be used with brittle materials. When exposed to high temperatures, they break down. The method for making a ceramic based aerogel that can be used in flexible applications and does not break down when exposed to very high temperatures has been developed by the researchers.

A ceramic material that looked like cotton candy was created by pushing a zirconium-Silicon precursor into a chamber with turbulent air. They heated the material to 1100 C after folding it into a zig-zag pattern. A flexible aerogel made using a ceramic that was not prone to breaking down under high temperatures was created using the approach shown by the study.

The researchers applied a butane blowtorch to an airplane fuel tube and then used it to insulate it. They found that using a generic polyimide barrier allowed the temperatures in the tube to reach 267 C while a conventional aerogel kept the temperature to 159 C and the new gel kept it at just 33 C.

More information: Jingran Guo et al, Hypocrystalline ceramic aerogels for thermal insulation at extreme conditions, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04784-0 Journal information: Nature

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