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Aerogel: The World’s Lightest Super Material
Posted on June 22nd, 2016 by Christina Valimaki in New Materials & Applications
In the late 1920s Dr Samuel Kistler made a bet with his colleague that gel’s defining characteristic was its structure, not its liquid properties. Despite a number of failed attempts to remove the liquid from gel and maintain its properties, Kistler eventually succeeded.
It’s hard to believe that a simple bet could result in the creation of aerogel. A substance that has been used by NASA to collect space dust and is something that is used in your everyday household products.
In this article, you will learn about:
- The process that made it possible to remove liquid from a gel
- Which properties make aerogel unique
- How aerogel is used in everyday products and far, far beyond
Do you have an Alpha Moment to share? Please let us know in the comments or via a tweet using #AlphaMoment
- Interested in more Alpha Moments?
- Learn how a CRO was able to target the most promising molecules and increase speed to market
- Learn how an adhesives company developed a new anti-corrosive coating
- Discover how a team of DuPont scientists, polymerized chloroprene, clearing the path for neoprene to become the go-to rubber substitute
All opinions shared in this post are the author’s own.
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