Aerogel Sintering: From Optical Glasses to Nuclear Waste Containment

Jean Phalippou , Philippe Dieudonné (1) , A Faivre , Thierry Woignier (2)

1 L2C - Laboratoire Charles Coulomb
2 IMBE - Institut méditerranéen de biodiversité et d'écologie marine et continentale

Aerogels are ultraporous materials with a very low permeability. They exhibithigh specific surface area but, due to their huge porous volume, their mechanical properties are quite poor. Aerogels belong to two main families: inorganic materials as silica, silicates, and a few aluminates and organic aerogels which are easily transformed into carbon aerogels by a simple pyrolysis thermal treatment. In this chapter, we mainly report experiments performed on alcohol-dried aerogels. Due to their broad range of porosity, aerogels canfitin very different applications: from analysis of cosmic dust to nuclear waste containment glasses. Advantages of large porosity are sometimes used directly like in thermal and acoustic insulation, or in catalyzers, but a too high pore volume can also be a drawback like in glass precursor and host matrix. Fortunately, aerogel porosity can be tailored using sintering or room isostatic compression or eventually a combination of both methods. Knowledge in this area allows now to synthesize aerogels with a broad range of porosity and also a very broad range of texture.

Keywords: Aerogel; Optical Glasses; Nuclear Waste; Carbon aerogels; Pyrolysis

Domains: Chemical Sciences; Chemical Sciences; Material chemistry

Jean Phalippou, Philippe Dieudonné, A Faivre, Thierry Woignier. Aerogel Sintering: From Optical Glasses to Nuclear Waste Containment. Handbook of Sol-Gel Science and Technology Processing: Characterization and Applications, , pp.1949 - 1969, 2018, 978-3-319-32101-1. ⟨10.1007/978-3-319-32101-1_56⟩. ⟨hal-01929789⟩