The invention relates to insulating composite materials comprising an inorganic aerogel and a melamine foam. The invention also relates to the production method of said materials, and to the use of same.

The invention provides a method for producing a heat insulating material composed of a hydrophobic aerogel, and the method includes the steps of: (1) mixing step; (2) hydrolysis step; (3) condensation step; (4) aging step; and (5) drying step. In the method, a siloxane compound, an inorganic gel, and a halogen-free surfactant are mixed and then a sol-gel process is performed to produce the aerogel heat-insulating material without water-washing. The produced heat-insulating material has preferable strength, smooth appearance, and low shrinkage and can overcome the powder-dropping problem. By the provided method, an aerogel heat-insulating board can be produced, or an aerogel cold-resisting and heat-insulating blanket can be produced by mixing with a fiber or a foam material.

Provided is a hydrophobic silica aerogel precursor, and a hydrophobic silica aerogel produced using the same. In the methods, a linear silane crosslinking agent containing a PEG-derived unit is introduced when preparing a hydrophobic aerogel precursor, resulting in the production of a hydrophobic silica aerogel having improved high-temperature thermal stability and improved physical properties.

A dried polymer aerogel has a Brunauer-Emmett Teller (BET) surface area over 100 m2/g, porosity of greater than 10%, visible transparency greater than 20%, color rendering index of over 20%, and average pore size of less than 100 nm.

Provided is a method of manufacturing a silica aerogel blanket, and an apparatus for manufacturing a silica aerogel blanket used in the method. The method includes: (1) drying a silica hydrogel through a supercritical drying process using a supercritical extractor; (2) separating an extract discharged from the supercritical extractor into a gaseous phase including CO.sub.2 and a liquid phase including a solvent through a separator to discharge the gaseous phase and the liquid phase; and (3) condensing the gaseous phase including CO.sub.2 discharged from the separator in a condenser, wherein the separation in the separator is performed under the condition of a pressure of 60 bar to 90 bar, and the gaseous phase including CO.sub.2 discharged from the separator is condensed in the condenser so that the gaseous phase has a temperature of 10° C. or higher and a pressure of 60 bar to 90 bar.

A flexible boron nitride nanoribbon aerogel has an interconnected three-dimensional porous network structure which is formed by mutually twining and contacting boron nitride nanoribbons and consists of macropores having a pore diameter of more than 50 nm, mesopores having a pore diameter of 2-50 nm and micropores having a pore diameter of less than 2 nm. The preparation method of the flexible boron nitride nanoribbon aerogel includes the following steps: performing high-temperature dissolution on boric acid and a nitrogen-containing precursor to form a transparent precursor solution, preparing the transparent precursor solution into precursor hydrogel, subsequently drying and performing high-temperature pyrolysis to obtain the flexible boron nitride nanoribbon aerogel. The boron nitride nanoribbon aerogel has excellent flexibility and resilience and can withstand different forms of loads from the outside within a wide temperature range.

The invention relates to a method for producing an aerogel under increased pressure, to the aerogel obtained using said method and to their use.

Disclosed herein is an aerogel made from a polyhydroxy benzene compound crosslinked with formaldehyde. The aerogel is dry and has a first volume and wherein the aerogel can be exposed to a liquid and be re-dried in a gas while retaining at least 70% of the first volume.

Some embodiments of the present disclosure relate to an assembly. In some embodiments the assembly comprises at least one antenna and a thermal insulation component. In some embodiments, the at least one antenna is configured to transmit a field of radiofrequency (RF) communication at an operating frequency ranging from 6 GHz to 100 GHz. In some embodiments, the thermal insulation component is disposed within the field of RF communication. In some embodiments, the thermal insulation component has a thermal conductivity ranging from 0.0025 W/m.Math.K to 0.025 W/m.Math.K at 25° C. and 1 atm.

The present invention describes various methods for manufacturing gel composite sheets using segmented fiber or foam reinforcements and gel precursors. Additionally, rigid panels manufactured from the resulting gel composites are also described. The gel composites are relatively flexible enough to be wound and when unwound, can be stretched flat and made into rigid panels using adhesives.