Wednesday, 18 October 2006 - 8:35 AM
Salon C (Doubletree Hotel at Reid Park)
385

Strengthening of aerogels by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of ethyl cyanoacrylate

Dylan Boday1, Kimberly A. DeFriend2, Kennard Wilson Jr.2, and Douglas A. Loy1. (1) University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, (2) Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM

Aerogels are extremely high surface area, low density materials with numerous applications including thermal insulators, radiation detectors, dust particle traps, and adsorbents. However, its low density also makes it extremely fragile and almost impossible to machine or process without breaking. In this research we are exploring the use of the organic chemical vapor deposition of cyanoacrylate onto aerogels as a means to strengthen the aerogels with minimum change in their attractive physical characteristics. Preliminary results show that cyanoacrylates readily adsorb onto untreated silica aerogels with an increase in strength. This increased strength is due the thickening of the aerogels particle network from the thin, conformal coating of the cyanoacrylate and the toughness exhibited by the polymer added to the network. Even with this increase in strength only a small amount of the surface area was reduced. These results signify that we have been able to increase the strength, while retaining the surface area that makes aerogels attractive to there many applications.

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