Aerogels are ultraporous materials with a very low permeability. They exhibit high specific surface area but, due to their huge porous volume, their mechanical properties are quite poor. Aerogels belong to two main families: inorganic materials as silica, silicates, and a few aluminates and organic aerogels which are easily transformed into carbon aerogels by a simple pyrolysis thermal treatment. In this chapter, we mainly report experiments performed on alcohol-dried aerogels. Due to their broad range of porosity, aerogels can fit in very different applications: from analysis of cosmic dust to nuclear waste containment glasses. Advantages of large porosity are sometimes used directly like in thermal and acoustic insulation, or in catalyzers, but a too high pore volume can also be a drawback like in glass precursor and host matrix. Fortunately, aerogel porosity can be tailored using sintering or room isostatic compression or eventually a combination of both methods. Knowledge in this area allows now to synthesize aerogels with a broad range of porosity and also a very broad range of texture.
CITATION STYLE
Phalippou, J., Dieudonné, P., Faivre, A., & Woignier, T. (2018). Aerogel sintering: From optical glasses to nuclear waste containment. In Handbook of Sol-Gel Science and Technology: Processing, Characterization and Applications (pp. 1949–1969). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32101-1_56
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