Nowadays, aerogels are everywhere, from the aerospace and defense industries to the knee pads and insoles in daily life.

Aerogels have been widely used in space exploration. China's Zhurong Mars Rover, Russia's Mir Space Station, and the United States' Mars Pathfinder Rover all use aerogels as thermal insulation materials.

The application of aerogels in the aerospace field is far more than that. As early as the end of the 20th century, aerogels had been made into dust collectors to collect comet dust in the universe.

Scientists believe that comet dust in the universe contains the most primitive and oldest substances in the solar system, which can help humans understand the history of the sun and planets more clearly. But collecting comet dust is not an easy task. The volume of comet dust is smaller than that of a grain of sand, but its movement speed is at least 6 times that of a rifle bullet. When it comes into contact with other substances at such a high speed, its physical and chemical composition may change, or even evaporate completely.


The properties of silica aerogel itself can solve this problem well. It is like an extremely soft baseball glove. Its extremely low density allows the dust to slow down slowly without being damaged. Its intricate structure can play a good buffering role, allowing it to slide a distance equivalent to 200 times its own length and then slowly stop. After entering the "aerogel glove", the stardust will leave a carrot-shaped track. Since aerogel is almost transparent, scientists can easily find these particles along the track.

The Stardust spacecraft launched by NASA in 1999 carried a dust collector made of aerogel. In 2006, Stardust returned to Earth with the first batch of comet dust samples obtained by humans. The captured dust particles were clearly visible, and the aerogel units were intact. This proves that silica aerogel is a well-deserved artifact for collecting interstellar dust.

Electric vehicles commonly seen in people's daily lives are also inseparable from aerogel.

Electric vehicles mainly use lithium-ion batteries as power batteries. Under extreme conditions, battery thermal runaway is the primary safety issue of electric vehicles. The application of aerogel insulation materials has greatly improved the safety of new energy vehicles.

Aerogel insulation sheet is an aerogel composite insulation material based on silica aerogel and ceramic fiber substrate. It is used to block heat transfer between the heating part and the equipment shell. Aerogel felt has the characteristics of low thermal conductivity, good insulation effect and non-flammability. Compared with traditional insulation materials, aerogel felt only needs 1/5 to 1/3 of the thickness to achieve the same insulation effect. At present, many automotive power battery manufacturers have adopted silica aerogel insulation composite felt as the separator material of power battery components on a large scale.

In addition, aerogel is also widely used in production and life: light and thin cold-proof clothing made of aerogel can withstand liquid nitrogen spray at -196℃; functional cellulose aerogel has natural advantages in adsorbing gases such as carbon dioxide and formaldehyde, and removing heavy metal ions, organic dyes, organic solvents and oily sewage from wastewater...

At present, there are many kinds of aerogels that humans can prepare, each of which has its own unique and interesting properties, and has been successfully used in high-tech equipment and daily life. With the continuous improvement of preparation technology and the continuous development of science and technology, the cost of aerogel development has gradually decreased. We believe that aerogels will be more widely used in all walks of life, bringing surprising changes to various fields.