Dragonflies Inspire a New Way To Create and Dry Aerogels | AIChE

Dragonflies Inspire a New Way To Create and Dry Aerogels

June
2018

When a dragonfly emerges from its underwater larval stage and stretches out its wings for the first time, those wings are as soft as jelly. But after a mere hour or so, they are solid and strong enough to zip the insect along at up to 34 mph.

The natural marvel of the dragonfly’s wings has inspired a new method of making aerogels, the lightest, most porous materials in the world. Aerogels are used only in niche applications today, including some sporting equipment and in NASA space suits, but they have potential for everything from drug delivery to building insulation. The problem, says Lidija Siller, a reader in nanoscale science at Newcastle Univ. in the U.K., is that making aerogels at large scales — like those needed to insulate a building — is prohibitively expensive.

That’s because the process of drying the fragile aerogels without allowing their pore networks to collapse is complex and expensive, involving supercritical carbon dioxide or a slew of solvents, Siller says. That’s where the dragonflies come in. Siller and her colleagues were...

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