Properties, Preparation, Applications and Handling of Aerogels

Aerogels materials are the porous, solid materials that exhibit a different way of extreme material properties. Mainly aerogels are known for their extremely low densities (which range from 0.0011 to 0.5 g cm−3). Aerogels are nano structured materials with high specific surface area and porosity along with low density and dielectric constant with excellent heat insulation properties which have 95–99% air in volume. Aerogels materials are generally prepared by removing of the liquid substance of gel through a supercritical drying process which makes the liquid to be slowly dried out without the collapsing of the solid matrix in the gel from the capillary action. This particular paper presents a review of properties, preparation, application, and handling of aerogel materials. The total review in this paper makes ease of work and more reliable for future.