What is an Aerogel?

Aerogel was first invented in the 1930's and used by National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

It is a man made synthetic porous ultralight unique material derived from a gel, in which the liquid component for the gel has been replaced with a gas without significant collapse of the gel structure.

While NASA uses Aspen Aerogels' product for cryogenic applications such as launch vehicles, space shuttle applications, and life support equipment. There is an array of commercial industrial applications including pipe insulation, building and construction, appliances and refrigeration.

The result is a solid with extremely low density and extremely low thermal conductivity. Nicknames include frozen smoke, solid smoke, solid air, solid cloud, and blue smoke, owing to its translucent nature and the way light scatters in the material.

Aerogel is a material that is 99.8% air. They have a porous solid network that contains air pockets, with the air pockets taking up the majority of space within the material. The dearth of solid material allows aerogel to be almost weightless.

It was created by Samuel Stephens Kistler in 1931, as a result of a bet with Charles Learned over who could replace the liquid in "jellies" with gas without causing shrinkage.

Aerogels are good thermal insulators because they nullify two of the three methods of heat transfer, conduction and convection.They are good convective inhibitors because air cannot circulate through the lattice.