Abstract
Due to their broad range of porosity, aerogels are suited to various applications. The advantages of a broad range of porosity are used directly, for example, in thermal and acoustic insulation, as materials for space applications or in catalysers. However, an overly high pore volume can also be a drawback, for example, in a glass precursor and host matrix. Fortunately, aerogel porosity can be tailored using sintering or isostatic compression. Sets of silica aerogels—sintered and compressed aerogels—have been studied with the objective of comparing these different densification mechanisms. We focus on the mechanical changes during the two processes of densification.
Highlights
Aerogels are fascinating materials because of their exceptional properties, such as low thermal conductivity, low densities and refractive index, low sound velocity, etc. [1,2,3]
Thermal the aerogel aerogel to to be be converted converted into into porous porous glasses glasses and/or and/or fully dense silica glass and the final density of the sintered aerogels will depend on the thermal treatments applied
SinteringSintering is a process by which surface area ofarea a material is decreased by mass transport is a process bythe which the surface of a material is decreased by mass transport
Summary
Aerogels are fascinating materials because of their exceptional properties, such as low thermal conductivity, low densities and refractive index, low sound velocity, etc. [1,2,3]. These properties are related to the large porosity which can be higher than 99% [1,2] This large pore volume can be used as a host matrix to obtain different kinds of materials such as multicomponent aerogels, binary glasses, composites, and materials with gradient properties [1,4,5]. For this purpose, some physical properties that depend on the aerogel porosity (permeability, diffusion, mechanical properties) are important because they affect the transport of the chemical species, the pore volume and the brittleness of the matrix. The pH of the solution could change the aggregation mechanisms of the monomers and lead to different microstructure and porosity [7]
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