The folks at Aerogel.org are serious about it: The “Make” section of their exhaustive “open source aerogel” site will teach you how to make high-quality monolithic aerogel the way the pros do it, from building your our own supercritical drying apparatus (“manuclave” is their neologism), to mixing up the wet ingredients, to actually performing the supercritical drying operation. It still won’t be easy or cheap, but all the information you need is right there, well organized and clearly explained.
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8 thoughts on “How-To: Make Your Own Aerogel”
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ooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, coolie-o
For folks interested in getting an aerogel sample disc, block or tile for engineering projects or to experiment with, BuyAerogel.com sells silica aerogel, as well as other formulations, granules and blanket aerogels.
They’re also the folks who wrote Aerogel.org, so they kinda know what they’re doing. It’s a lot easier than trying to get your own hands on some tetramethoxysilane (aerogel precursor)!
awesome, i want a sample for a 30 min material engineering class presentation i have to do!
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