The application of aerogel in the field of construction

Aerogel is a new type of amorphous solid material that is aggregated by nano-sized particles and uses air as the dispersion medium. Different from wet gel using solvent as dispersion medium, aerogel is a lightweight nano-scale porous material obtained by replacing the solvent in the original skeleton with air, which is different from the conventional sol-gel method. Xerogels, aerogels are also sometimes referred to as solid smoke or frozen smoke due to their translucent color and ultra-light weight. Due to the nanoporous super-insulation properties of aerogels, it has a wide range of potential applications in the field of building energy conservation. However, in the field of construction, the cost of synthesis and application is too high. Only by reducing the production cost of these super materials can this new functional material be widely used.

SiO2 aerogel material

Aerogel, a porous and lightweight material, was discovered as early as 70 years ago. In 1931, Kistler S. of California Pacific University used supercritical drying to remove water from hydrogels and obtained the first Aerogel materials without shrinkage, in the course of so many years of development and evolution, many potential excellent properties of aerogel materials have been developed, now what we call SiO2 aerogel is a kind of nano-SiO2 skeleton. It consists of translucent materials with a porosity of up to 99%, a density of 0.05 to 0.2 g/cm3, a gel size of less than 50 nm, a pore diameter of less than the mean free path of molecules, and a thermal conductivity of 0.03 to 0.05 W/m at room temperature. ·K.

Application of SiO2 aerogel for  domestic and foreign construction

The application of SiO2 aerogel in construction is still blank in China, and the current research is mainly in the development of high value-added application products, such as application in aerospace, drug carrier and so on. In foreign countries, since 2000, there has been a certain research and application of aerogel materials for construction. Now the main research directions are aerogel energy-saving windows, aerogel coatings, new aerogel sheets and roof solar collectors.