Silica aerogels are known as high performance porous materials with low density, high surface area, and low thermal conductivity, which have been applied to various fields such as thermal insulator, support for catalysts, and adsorbents. However, industrial applications of the silica aerogels have been limited by their brittleness and high cost due to a supercritical drying process. In this study, it was attempted to synthesize porous silica xerogels employing two kinds of silane monomers and poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) via a two-step sol-gel reaction and to dry them under ambient pressure. Fig.1 showed SEM images of the xerogels, in which the frameworkbecomes coarser with an increase in the PDMS content. Fig.2 showed stress-strain curves of the xerogels in a compression mode. It was demonstrated that the xerogel synthesized from vinyltrimethoxysilane (VTMS) is more flexible than that from methyltrimethoxysilane (MTMS), exhibiting a unique property of high flexibility.

Silica xerogels synthesized using silane monomers and poly(dimethylsiloxane) as precursors

248th National Meeting (2014)

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