Antigravity water transport system inspired by trees

Efficiently moving water upward against gravity is a major feat of human engineering, yet one that trees have mastered for hundreds of millions of years. In a new study, researchers have designed a tree-inspired water transport ...

Specific ion effects directed noble metal aerogels

Noble metal foams (NMFs) are a new class of functional materials that contain both noble metals and monolithic porous materials for impressive multi prospects in materials science and multidisciplinary fields. In a recent ...

Rubbery carbon aerogels greatly expand applications

Researchers have designed carbon aerogels that can be reversibly stretched to more than three times their original length, displaying elasticity similar to that of a rubber band. By adding reversible stretchability to aerogels' ...

Using Einstein's tea leaf paradox to study nanofluids

Stirring can allow the dispersion of substances evenly in liquid. Einstein's tea leaf paradox is a concept that shows how tea leaves can concentrate in a doughnut shape through a secondary flow effect during stirring. In ...

Getting more heat out of sunlight

A newly developed material that is so perfectly transparent you can barely see it could unlock many new uses for solar heat. It generates much higher temperatures than conventional solar collectors do—enough to be used ...

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Aerogel

Aerogel is a synthetic porous material derived from a gel, in which the liquid component of the gel has been replaced with a gas. The result is a solid with extremely low density and thermal conductivity. It is nicknamed frozen smoke, solid smoke, solid air or blue smoke owing to its translucent nature and the way light scatters in the material; however, it feels like expanded polystyrene (styrofoam) to the touch.

Aerogel was first created by Samuel Stephens Kistler in 1931, as a result of a bet with Charles Learned over who could replace the liquid in 'jellies' with gas without causing shrinkage.

Aerogels are produced by extracting the liquid component of a gel through supercritical drying. This allows the liquid to be slowly drawn off without causing the solid matrix in the gel to collapse from capillary action, as would happen with conventional evaporation. The first aerogels were produced from silica gels. Kistler's later work involved aerogels based on alumina, chromia and tin oxide. Carbon aerogels were first developed in the late 1980s.

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