The Application Of Flexible Aerogels In Clothing Is Thiner Than That Of Duvet.

Aerogel is a solid material with nano porous network structure. It is also the lightest solid material in the world. It has been praised as one of the ten new materials to change the world with Shi Moxi and fullerene.

It has outstanding performance in the fields of heat, optics, electricity, mechanics, acoustics and so on. It is a dual-use technology with great application value.

The history of aerogels can be traced back to 1931. The silica aerogel was first prepared by supercritical ethanol drying in University of the Pacific, California.

Although this silica aerogel has good thermal insulation, its outstanding brittleness limits its wide application. Until 1990s, NASA proposed the idea of developing flexible aerogel composites in order to solve the problem of insulation materials for space shuttle storage and pfer of liquid fuel tanks. In 1992, it signed a small business innovation research (SBIR) project contract with Aspen Systems of the United States, aiming at developing flexible, durable and easy to use aerogels.

In 1999, Aspen Systems developed a fiber composite aerogel super insulation material. In 2001, the Aspen Aerogel company established the commercial operation of aerogel materials and opened up the aerogel as an industrial superheating material.

This fiber aerogel composite material is rapidly applied to low temperature fuel tanks and pipelines in the aerospace field, and has been extended to civil fields such as construction, electrical appliances, refrigeration equipment and so on.

Electrospun composite aerogel films

Thanks to good thermal performance, OROS and Aspen Aerogels co operated with the fiber aerogel composite as the thermal insulation material and launched its first Lukla assault garment.

However, due to the neglect of the problem that the aerogel thermal insulation material may peel off during the movement, the clothing may lose the heat insulation performance with the use.

Almost airtight.

Since then, the company has carried out a series of improvements in air permeability and durability on the basis of the first garment. A new type of polymer composite aerogel called SolarCore has been developed, which makes the weight of the suit clothing reduced by 40% and its permeability is better. It can be widely used in gloves, snowpants, hats, shirts and other products.

The Aerogel Technologies company of the United States has also developed Aerotherm aerogel thermal products for clothing shoes and hats based on Aspen Aerogels aerogels.

Aerotherm aerogel material is a porous material made by impregnating silicone aerogels onto nonwoven flexible substrates. Its thermal insulation performance is 2~8 times that of traditional thermal insulation materials. It has excellent pressure bearing capacity, and its thermal performance is almost unaffected by pressure. Even under 15 pounds / square inch pressure, it can maintain over 95% of its original thickness and more than 97% of its thermal insulation performance.

Therefore, only 2mm of Aerotherm aerogel material can improve the thermal performance of clothing by 2~3 times, especially in areas under constant pressure, such as knees, elbows, buttocks, soles and so on.

The clothing made of this material can achieve better thermal insulation performance without using warm sandwich material, while the sandwich thermal insulation structure usually loses warmth due to compression.

In addition, polymer based Polyimide Flexible aerogels developed by NASA have begun to seek industrialization in the civilian sector.

In 2015, FLEXcon obtained the technology license from NASA GRC and co operated with Blueshift company, which is also developing polyimide aerogels, for a larger scale.

This is in accordance with the NASA high specification aerogel material.

In addition to pipe insulation products used in extreme environments, FLEXcon is developing polyimide aerogels for high-end outdoor products such as outdoor clothing, gloves, boots, tents, etc.