Hybrid aerogels made from biopolymers and silica are strong and extremely insulating

Airy, airier, aerogel: the sponge-like networks that make up these highly porous solids can consist of up to 99.98 % pores. The most common aerogels are based on silica and are most often used as insulation because of their unusually low thermal conductivity. The serious disadvantage of these materials is their fragility. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, a team of Swiss and French scientists has now introduced a new class of hybrid aerogels made from silica and plant-derived pectins. The new ma