The Stardust Mission used silica aerogel as the hypervelocity particle capture and return material since silica aerogel was the most reproducible to manufacture and the most thoroughly evaluated type of aerogel at the time [1]. However, the Stardust Science Team recognized that the use of silica aerogel, while expedient, introduced limits to mission’s eventual science return. This is due to the...

We have investigated the adsorption and desorption of helium near its liquid-vapor critical point in silica aerogels with porosities between 95% and 98%. We used a capacitive measurement technique which allowed us to probe the helium density inside the aerogel directly, even though the samples were surrounded by bulk helium. The aerogel’s very low thermal conductivity resulted in long equilibra...

Biomass is the most plentiful and well-utilized renewable carbon resource on the earth. Direct conversion of biomass to carbon aerogel provides a promising approach to develop adsorbent materials. In the present work, the effect of presence of water during hydrothermal treatment and holding temperature during post-pyrolysis process have been investigated for the preparation of carbon aerogels (...

The bulk properties of biopolymer aerogels depend on their microstructure, which can be tailored by different synthesis and drying methods. Biopolymer are characterized a fibrillar morphology having cellular-like network. recently proposed constitutive modeling approach Rege et al. [1] has shown good predictive capabilities in describing the mechanical behavior such aerogels. Although model des...