The purpose of this project was to study Svenska Aerogel AB’s product Quartzene®, and develop its capacity as a thermal insulator. Quartzene® is a silica based mesoporous material developed by Svenska Aerogel AB, with properties similar to aerogels produced by the sol-gel process. In this report, the correlation between pore structure and thermal conductivity in the material has been studied using techniques, such as scanning electron microscopy, focused ion beam, finite element simulations and transient plane source. Its properties are interesting because of the expanding market of insulated vacuum panels; in which Svenska Aerogel AB wish to expand to. It was found that the pore sizes of M21-BU increased after compression, and the pore sizes of M4-0-2 decreased. The pore sizes of M21-BU became so large that the Knudsen effect is no longer of interest, and that could explain the different behaviors in thermal conductivity.

No description available.

Having access to clean water is not a certainty for every human being. Today, there are major problems with polluted water that not just affect us humans, but also the ecosystem around us. In recent years, research into making aerogels from protein nanofibrils (PNF) has increased. What is interesting about these gels is their properties of adsorbing contaminants in the water, such as organic molecules and metal ions. In this report, hydrogels and non-dry aerogels (called “non-dry” due to there being one additional heat-treatment step that can be performed to “dry” the aerogel to make it sturdier and more water-proof), have been produced by whey protein isolate (WPI), which is extracted from the dairy industry. This is a sustainable, cheap, and renewable raw material. The goals are thus: (1) to examine if there is a difference in adsorption capacity between hydrogels and non-dry aerogels in a static setup and (2) to understand and examine which product parameters give the gels the best adsorption efficiency. To achieve these goals, eight different gels were synthesized with eight different contents. The parameters have varied from the following; dialyzed or non-dialyzed WPI solution, straight or curly seeds and whether or not salt had been added to the gels. The samples’ adsorption efficiency was analyzed by micro equilibrium dialysis (MED) and UV-VIS spectroscopy. For hydrogels, the dialyzed solution with salt and curly seeds was the variant with the highest binding capacity for ThT at 34% of the initial ThT concentration. For non-dry aerogels the dialyzed solution with curly seeds and no added salt was the best variant for binding ThT, at 84% of initial ThT content bound. It was also seen that the gels that have non-dialyzed WPI solution or that the solutions contained salt increased the adsorption capacity. The conclusions drawn were that salt has a positive effect on the adsorption capacity of the gels that have formed a matrix, and a negative effect on the adsorption of loose fibrils as well as that the solutions may not need to be dialyzed. The type of seeds or fibrils effect on adsorption capacity was inconclusive. The adsorption capacity for non-dry aerogels was three times higher compared to hydrogels. / Att ha tillgång till rent vatten är inte en självklarhet för varje människa. Idag är det stora problem med förorenat vatten som inte bara påverkar oss människor utan också ekosystemet. På senare år har forskning inom att tillverka aerogeler av protein nanofibriller (PNF) ökat. Det som är intressant med dessa geler är deras egenskaper att adsorbera föroreningar i vattnet, som till exempel organiska molekyler och metalljoner. I detta arbete har icke-torra aerogels (kallas "icke-torra" på grund av att det finns ytterligare ett värmebehandlingssteg som kan utföras för att "torka" aerogelen för att göra dem robustare och mer vattentålig) och hydrogels producerats av vassleproteinisolat WPI, som utvinns från mjölkindustrin. Detta protein är ett hållbart, billigt och förnybart råmaterial. Målet med denna rapport är att (1) undersöka om det finns skillnader i adsorptionskapaciteterna mellan hydrogels och icke-torra aerogels i ett statiskt medium (2) förstå och undersöka vilka produktionsparametrar som ger den bästa adsorptionskapaciteten. För att uppnå dessa mål har åtta olika geler syntetiserats med åtta olika innehåll. De varierande parametrarna var följande; dialyserad eller icke dialyserad WPI-lösning, raka eller krulliga frön och om salt har tillsatts eller inte. Proverna analyserades med mikro-jämvikts-dialys och UV-VIS spektroskopi. För hydrogeler var den dialyserade lösningen med salt och krulliga seeds den variant som hade högst bindningskapacitet för ThT, vilket låg på 34 % av den orginellaThT-koncentrationen. För icke-tora aerogels var lösningen som var dialyserad med krulliga frön och inget tillsatt salt den variant som var bäst på att binda ThT, med en kapacitet på 84% av den orginella koncentrationen. Vi såg även att gelerna som hade odialyserad WPI-lösning alternativt att lösningarna som innehöll salt ökade adsorptionskapaciteten. Slutsatserna som dragits är att salt har en positiv påverkan på gelernas adsorptionsförmåga när de format en fibermatris och en negativ påverkan när de bara består av fria fibriller, samt att lösningarna kanske inte behöver dialyseras. Typ av frön eller fibrillers påverkan på adsorptionsförmåga kunde inte påvisas. Icke-torra aerogels hade en adsorptionsförmåga på ThT som är tre gånger högre jämfört med hydrogels.

No description available.

No description available.

The phase diagrams for the thermoreversible gelation of poly(ether ether ketone) (PEEK) in dichloroacetic acid (DCA) and 4-chlorophenol (4CP) were constructed over broad temperature and concentration ranges, revealing that PEEK is capable of dissolving and forming gels in DCA and 4CP up to a weight fraction of 25 wt.%. Highly porous aerogels of PEEK were prepared through simple solvent exchange and solvent removal of the PEEK/DCA or PEEK/4CP gels. Solvent removal utilized freeze-drying (sublimation) methods or supercritical CO2 drying methods. Varying the weight fraction of PEEK dissolved in solution determined PEEK aerogel density. Mechanical properties (in compression) were shown to improve with increasing density, resulting in equivalent compressive moduli at comparable density regardless of preparation method (concentration variation, gelation solvent, solvent removal method, or annealing parameters). Additionally, density-matched aerogels from various MW PEEK showed a correlation between increasing MW and increasing compressive modulus. Contact angle and contact angle hysteresis revealed that PEEK aerogels have a high contact angle, exceeding the conditions necessary to be classified as superhydrophobic materials. PEEK aerogel contact angle decreases with increasing density and a very low contact angle hysteresis that increases with increasing density, regardless of gelation solvent or drying method. Small angle neutron scattering (SANS) contrast-matching experiments were used to elucidate the morphological origin of scattering features, wherein it was determined that the origin of the scattering feature present in the small angle scattering region was stacked crystalline lamella. Ultra-small angle X-ray scattering (USAXS)/SAXS/Wide angle X-ray scattering (WAXS) was then used to probe the hierarchical nanostructure of PEEK aerogels across a broad range of length scales. The Unified Fit Model was used to extract structural information, which was then used to determine the specific surface areas of PEEK aerogels. Regardless of gelation solvent, gel concentration, or solvent removal method, all PEEK aerogels display high surface areas as determined by SAXS and high surface areas as determined by nitrogen adsorption methods. Surface area values determined from SAXS data were consistently higher than that measured directly using nitrogen adsorption, suggesting that pore densification diminishes the accessible aerogel surface area. / Ph. D. / Poly(ether ether ketone) (PEEK) is a semicrystalline polymer with high temperature thermal transitions and excellent mechanical strength, making it an ideal candidate for many high-performance polymer applications. When PEEK is dissolved in particular solvents, it will form a 3-dimensional network where crystalline polymer is the cross-linking unit of the network. Careful solvent removal does not significantly perturb the gel network structure and produces a low-density aerogel. This work details the first reported instance of the monolithic gelation of PEEK and the first examples of PEEK aerogels. The nanostructure of these gels and aerogels is fully characterized to relate structural features to physical properties such as mechanical stiffness and wettability.

Idag har inte alla människor tillgång till rent vatten trots att det är en mänsklig rättighet. För att lösa detta problem har olika reningsmetoder som destillation och membranfiltrering föreslagits, men på senare tid har också framställning av filter från animaliska proteiner som vassle undersökts som alternativ för vattenrening. I ett försök att öka den ekologiska hållbarheten, ämnar detta projekt att undersöka växtbaserade proteiner som alternativ till vassleproteinisolat (WPI) för produktion av proteinnanofibrill (PNF) - baserade vattenfilter. Potatisproteinisolat (PPI) har valts som växtproteinkälla och löslighet samt bildning av PNF-baserade vattenfilter har undersökts. Slutligen har PPI-filter jämförts med WPI-filter med avseende på adsorption av ibuprofen från vatten. PPI-filter har producerats och jämförts med WPI, men det går inte att dra några tydliga slutsatser om skillnaden i effektivitet av adsorption av ibuprofen.

Multi-metallic aerogels have emerged as a promising unsupported, high surface area-based metal material for different applications in heterogeneous catalysis and electrochemistry. The fabrication of these multi-metallic aerogels is based on a complex gelation process which is characterized by controlled aggregation of metallic nanoparticles to form a macroscopic network structure in aqueous solution. However, achieving structural homogeneity of the multi-metallic aerogels in terms of diameter of the nanochains and chemical composition at the nano- as well as at the macro-scale is still a great challenge. In this paper, we show the characterization of two Pd-Pt aerogels prepared by the two-step gelation method. The structural homogeneity and chemical distribution of both metals (Pd and Pt) inside the aerogels were analyzed using high-resolution (scanning) transmission microscopy (HR(S)TEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectroscopy, and cyclic voltammetry. Based on the microscopic and spectroscopic results, the Pd-Pt aerogels show the presence of Pd/Pt-rich domains inside the long-range framework. It is evident that the initial monometallic features dominate over alloying during the gelation process. Although the same synthetic approach for Pd-Pt aerogels with different atomic ratios was used, we observed that the sizes of these monometallic domains strongly varied between the Pd-rich and Pt-rich aerogels. For instance, the Pd-rich aerogels showed larger clusters with a size range from few nanometers up to several tens of nanometers, while the dimension of the clusters of the Pt-rich aerogels varies from the sub-nanometers to a few nanometers. The presence of the metal clusters strongly influenced the electrochemical robustness of these Pd-Pt aerogels. Electrochemical durability investigations revealed that the aerogels with a high content of Pd are less stable due to the gradual dissolution of the less noble metal in particular inside the Pd-rich domains. A better chemical and structural homogeneity might improve the life-time of the Pd-Pt aerogels under electrochemical conditions. In this work, we provide a better understanding about the structure and chemical distribution of the bimetallic aerogel framework prepared by the two step gelation process.

Carbide-derived carbon (CDC) aerogel monoliths with very high porosity are synthesized starting from polymeric precursors. Cross-linking by platinum-catalyzed hydrosilylation of polycarbosilanes followed by supercritical drying yields preceramic aerogels. After ceramic conversion and silicon extraction in hot chlorine gas, hierarchically porous carbon materials with specific surface areas as high as 2122 m² g⁻¹ and outstanding total pore volumes close to 9 cm³ g⁻¹ are obtained. Their pore structure is controllable by the applied synthesis temperature as shown by combined nitrogen (-196 °C) and carbon dioxide (0 °C) measurements coupled with electron microscopic methods. The combination of large micropore volumes and the aerogel-type pore system leads to advanced adsorption properties due to a combination of large storage capacities and effective materials transport in comparison with purely microporous reference materials as shown by thermal response measurements.

Multi-metallic aerogels have emerged as a promising unsupported, high surface area-based metal material for different applications in heterogeneous catalysis and electrochemistry. The fabrication of these multi-metallic aerogels is based on a complex gelation process which is characterized by controlled aggregation of metallic nanoparticles to form a macroscopic network structure in aqueous solution. However, achieving structural homogeneity of the multi-metallic aerogels in terms of diameter of the nanochains and chemical composition at the nano- as well as at the macro-scale is still a great challenge. In this paper, we show the characterization of two Pd-Pt aerogels prepared by the two-step gelation method. The structural homogeneity and chemical distribution of both metals (Pd and Pt) inside the aerogels were analyzed using high-resolution (scanning) transmission microscopy (HR(S)TEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectroscopy, and cyclic voltammetry. Based on the microscopic and spectroscopic results, the Pd-Pt aerogels show the presence of Pd/Pt-rich domains inside the long-range framework. It is evident that the initial monometallic features dominate over alloying during the gelation process. Although the same synthetic approach for Pd-Pt aerogels with different atomic ratios was used, we observed that the sizes of these monometallic domains strongly varied between the Pd-rich and Pt-rich aerogels. For instance, the Pd-rich aerogels showed larger clusters with a size range from few nanometers up to several tens of nanometers, while the dimension of the clusters of the Pt-rich aerogels varies from the sub-nanometers to a few nanometers. The presence of the metal clusters strongly influenced the electrochemical robustness of these Pd-Pt aerogels. Electrochemical durability investigations revealed that the aerogels with a high content of Pd are less stable due to the gradual dissolution of the less noble metal in particular inside the Pd-rich domains. A better chemical and structural homogeneity might improve the life-time of the Pd-Pt aerogels under electrochemical conditions. In this work, we provide a better understanding about the structure and chemical distribution of the bimetallic aerogel framework prepared by the two step gelation process.