Silica aerogels are nanostructured materials with unique physicochemical properties which have drawn a lot of interest in science

and technology. The first aerogels were prepared in the 1930s by Kistler, but the method of synthesis was slow and no follow up work in the field was attempt until 1074 when they were used in Cerenkov radiation detector. The preparation of silica aerogels involves the synthesis of a wet gel (called alcogel) by using sol-gel process, in which a liquid silicate precursor is hydrolyzed and condensed into a polysilicate gel. After the sol gel transition the solvent phase is removed by supercritical drying and aerogel is obtained. Aerogels synthesized with ionic liquids as solvents are called ionogels.

As silica gels have some unique properties and they are not harmful to the human body, they have many applications in science,technology pharmaceutical industry, agriculture, Absorbents- elastic hydrophobic silica gels are effective absorbents of oils and organic liquids Catalysts because of the high surface area and the high poriosity, silica gels are very appropriate to be used as catalyst or catalyst carrier. Thermal insulator aerogels own very small thermal conductivity, therefore they can be used to insulate refrigerators and refrigerated vehicles. During the sol-gel process nanostructured solid network is formed in the liquid reaction medium and siloxane bridges are formed (Si-O-Si)..A sol is a colloidal suspension of solid particles in a liquid. The sol gel process can be described with the following reactions: Si(OR)4+H2O HO-Si(OR)3 +ROH (OR)3Si-O-Si(OR)3+H2O (OR)3Si-O-Si(OR)3 +ROH Hydrolisys Polymerization

(OR)3Si-OH + HO-Si (OR)3 (OR)3Si-OR + HO-Si (OR)3

PROPERTIES Aerogels possess high porosity with small pore size and high surface area.They are usually largely mesoporous, with pore sizes ranging from 5 to 100 nm and average pore diameter between 20 and 40 nm. The associated specific surface area is in the ranges from 250

to 800 m2/g.Silica gels tipically have volume above 90% of their monolith volume. They also characterize with with low density. This value can be as low as 0,003 g/cm 3. Silica aerogels can either be transperant or opaque, depending on the conditions during synthesis. (transperant - optical transmition) Silica gels have low thermal conductivity tipically in the order of 0,015-0,02 W/mK at ambiemt pressure and temperature. Hydrophilic and hydrophobic

Silica precursors are the initial compounds for the preparation of the sol. They are metalorganic compounds, which have an organic ligand attached to a metal or metalloid atom and have a direct metal- carbon bonds. The most important requirments for the precursors are that they should be soluble in the reaction media reactive enough to participate in the gel forming process. The network forming ability of Si makes silica precursors preferred than the otherT he most common used silica precursors are tetraetylorthosilicate (TEOS),tetramethyorthosilicate, TMOS and Na2SiO3.

Ionic liquids(IL) are organic salts with low melting points and negligible vapor pressure

Solvents can be dividet into aprotic solvents and protic solvents.Protic solvents contain hydrogen atoms bound to electronegative elements (F-H O-H N-H) and are hydrogen- bond donors and are strongly polar.Most import protic solvents are water ammonia, alcohols, carboxylic acids. Aprotic solvents do not react as ahydrogen- bond donors since their C-H bonds are not polarized. To this class of solvents belong aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons, their halogen derivates, tertiary amines.