Affiliation:
1. Cellular Materials Laboratory (CellMat) Condensed Matter Physics Department Faculty of Science University of Valladolid Campus Miguel Delibes Paseo de Belén 7 47011 Valladolid Spain
2. CERES Department of Chemical Engineering University of Coimbra Rua Sílvio Lima 3030‐790 Coimbra Portugal
3. AerogelsLab Departamento de Farmacología Farmacia y Tecnología Farmacéutica I+D Farma Group (GI‐1645) Facultad de Farmacia iMATUS and Health Research Institute of Santiago de Compostela (IDIS) Universidade de Santiago de Compostela E‐15782 Santiago de Compostela Spain
4. Instituto de Tecnologías Físicas y de la Información, CSIC Spanish Scientific Research Council C/Serrano 144 28006 Madrid Spain
5. BioEcoUVA Research Institute on Bioeconomy University of Valladolid 47011 Valladolid Spain
Abstract
The aerogel performance for industrial uses can be tailored using several chemical and physical strategies. The effects of a controlled densification on polyurethane aerogels are herein studied by analyzing their textural, mechanical, sound, optical, and thermal insulating properties. The produced aerogels are uniaxially compressed to different strains (30%–80%) analyzing the consequent changes in the structures and, therefore, final properties. As expected, their mechanical stiffness can be significantly increased by compression (until 55‐fold higher elastic modulus for 80%‐strain), while the light transmittance does not noticeably worsen until it is compressed more than 60%. Additionally, the modifications produced in the heat transfer contributions are analyzed, obtaining the optimum balance between density increase and pore size reduction. The minimum thermal conductivity (14.5%‐reduction) is obtained by compressing the aerogel to 50%‐strain, where the increment in the solid conduction is surpassed by the reduction of the radiative and gas contributions. This strategy avoids tedious chemical modifications in the synthesis procedure to control the final structure of the aerogels, leading to the possibility of carefully adapting their structure and properties through a simple method such as densification. Thus, it allows to obtain aerogels for current and on‐demand applications, which is one of the main challenges in the field.
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4. Introductory Remarks