Rapid synthesis of ambient pressure dried tetraethoxysilane based silica aerogels

Silica aerogel can be produced by using ambient pressure drying (APD) or supercritical drying depending on the required properties and kind of application. Processing time for ambient pressure dried silica aerogels are longer due to the time consuming steps such as hydrolysis and solvent exchange. Considerable decrease in time has been reported by a few research groups by employing shaking during the solvent exchange. We are reporting further reduction in processing time of tetraethoxysilane (TEOS)-based silica aerogel by carrying out the hydrolysis process at elevated temperature. The aerogel obtained in least processing time showed low density (0.066 kg/m3), low thermal conductivity (0.043 W/mK), high specific surface area, and porosity. This shows that elevated temperature hydrolysis does not hamper the desired properties of the product.