Durable thermal fluid super-repellency of elastic fluorine-modified SiO2@sponge composite aerogel

Abstract

Elastic aerogel materials have significant potential to enduringly perform thermal management in the air. However, it is still an important challenge to directly and durably endure thermal fluid because of moisture absorption. To solve this issue, we fabricate an elastic fluorine-modified SiO2@sponge composite aerogel with low density, high specific surface area, low thermal conductivity in air, and high stress–strain (over 180 kPa under the strain of 60 %), low-quality failure rate (below 5 %), high relative height (over 95 %), hot liquid super-repellency, even after compression for 1000 cycles under the strain of 60 %. These features allow it to durably provide thermal fluid protection that can below 60℃ of maximum back temperature after directly facing 200 mL of hot liquid or hot steam for 12 h. These multiple key properties that have been integrated into our composite aerogel are expected to provide unique advantages for having more significant adaptation and selectivity for application in the thermal management fields, especially in the fluid thermal management field.