To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, Provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes. This article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, Sodium silicate-derived aerogels: effect of processing parameters on their applicationsĬreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. This review provides information on the unique features of a wide array of silica aerogels and their potential applications and recent developments in the field of science and technology. Owing to their unusual properties, these inorganic aerogels have been applied in both commercial and high-tech engineering applications such as thermal insulation, separation, coatings, optics, nuclear particle detection, sensing, and catalysis.
Silica aerogels can be hydrophobic or hydrophilic depending on their synthetic procedure and surface silanol groups. Ambient pressure drying has been developed as a low-cost route for the preparation of sodium silicate-derived aerogels, overcoming the difficulties with the use of organosilane precursors and super critical drying. They are processed through the sol–gel route, which is a reliable methodology to produce high-grade porous materials. Inorganic silica aerogels derived from sodium silicate are voluminous three-dimensional open networks with exceptional properties such as a density as low as ∼100 kg m −3, high porosity (∼99%), low thermal conductivity (∼0.01 W m −1 K −1), high specific surface area (∼1000 m 2 g −1), low refractive index (∼1.05) and high optical transmittance (∼95%) depending on their preparation conditions.