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Pyrolysis of Many Organic Aerogels, Such as Resorcinol-Formaldehyde Polymer Aerogels, Yields a Carbon Aerogel At the nanoscale, carbon aerogels are composed of nanoparticles of carbon with diameters approximately 1-2 nm. Like other aerogels, carbon aerogels are primarily mesoporous with a mean pore diameter of approximately 7-10 nm typical. Most carbon aerogels have a surface area ranging from 500-800 m2 g-1 however this is highly dependent on density and whether or not other stuff has been introduced (intentionally or unintentionally) into the aerogel. The surface area of a carbon aerogel can be easily increased post-production by placing it under a flow of steam or hydrogen at elevated temperatures (400C-1000C). At these temperatures, water and hydrogen will react with carbon in the aerogel to form gaseous products and eat micropores (pores <2 nm in diameter) throughout the interior of the aerogel, thereby increasing their surface area up to 2 500 m2 g-1. Carbon aerogels are exciting materials because they not only have surface areas ranging from about 500 to 2 500 m2 g-1 but they can also be electrically conductive! The combination of these two properties makes carbon aerogels valuable for applications which benefit from high-surface-area electrodes, such as supercapacitors, fuel cells, and desalination systems.
Polymerization of Resorcinol and Formaldehyde In the case of RF aerogels, the chemistry that is used is the polymerization of resorcinol (properly called 1,3-dihydroxybezne) with formaldehyde (properly called methanal) in water. This reaction is impractically slow at room temperature and so a small amount of a basic catalyst such as potassium or sodium carbonate is usually added. Over the course of about 24 hours at room temperature, polymer chains of resorcinol-formaldehyde polymer will form throughout the solution, tangling up into RF nanoparticles. The solution is then put into an oven (in a sealed bottle or mold!) at 80C for 1-3 days (or just left at room temperature for a couple weeks), during which the nanoparticles cross-link together to form a mesoporous network across the solution, resulting in a gel.
Gel Formation in the Resorcinol-Formaldehyde System The resulting RF gel has a consistency much rubberier than silica aerogels, more like canned cranberry sauce, and can even be sliced as such. Just like other aerogels, the RF gel must be purified before supercritical drying. For RF gels, this entails a few soakings in water, followed by a few soakings in a polar organic such as acetone or ethanol to prepare for supercritical drying. Lastly, the gel is supercritically dried to produce RF aerogel.
Resorcinol-Formaldehyde Gel Looks and Cuts Like Cranberry Sauce from a Can
Artificial Skin Which Can Be Made by Supercritical Drying of CollagenGlycosaminoglycan Gels The range of organic gels possible is vast so keep in mind-if you can make it into a gel you can probably make it into an aerogel, and aerogels often can do things wet gels cant.
a nasty shock!). At its most basic, a capacitor is composed of two parallel conductive plates separated by a gap composed of air or an insulating material such as Nylon or paper. The equation that governs how much energy a capacitor can store is approximately C = A/d where C is the capacitance, is the dielectric constant of the separator between the plates, A is the surface area of the plates, and d is the distance between the plates. The larger A is in this equation, the more energy the capacitor can store-and for applications where infinitely-large plates are too cumbersome to carry around, high-surface-area conductors like carbon aerogels are very important materials.
PowerStor(R) Supercapacitors Contain Carbon Aerogel for Their Ultrahigh Surface Area Electrodes (image courtesy Cooper-Bussman) Since carbon aerogels can have such incredibly high surface areas and electrical conductivity, they are now used as the electrode material in supercapacitors, namely the PowerStor line produced by Cooper-Bussmann. In fact, in the early 1990 s, the largest component capacitors that you could buy that would fit in the palm of your hand were about 500 millifarad to 1 farad in capacitance. By the end of the 1990 s, thanks to the commercialization of carbon aerogels, capacitors of 50 to 100 farads that could fit in your hand had become available-this is kind of like the buying a 300-horsepower BMW and then suddenly a 15,000-horespower engine comes out! Capacitors with such high capacitance are called supercapacitors (or sometimes ultracapacitors).
Schematic of Carbon Aerogel Supercapacitor (image courtesy Cooper-Bussman) Because supercapacitors can now carry so much energy, people are now experimenting with the idea of using supercapacitors as replacements for batteries in some devices and systems. Although supercapacitors do not yet have the same energy density as commercial batteries, they can charge and discharge much more quickly than batteries, making them useful for things like hybrid vehicles and storing energy from variable power generating devices like solar panels and wind mills. People have even proposed next-gen supercapacitors for powering cell phones-imagine if it only took a few seconds to charge your phone but in exchange you had to charge it two or three times a day-an interesting alternative to a battery.
we want both high surface area and good electrical conductivity, this means figuring out how to maximize electrical conductivity and surface area simultaneously. Scientists have developed a number of ways to combat this conspiracy of conductivity. One way is by activating high-density carbon aerogels, namely by exposing them to steam or hydrogen at temperatures of 400-1,000C (as described above). At these temperatures, steam and hydrogen eat away at the aerogels structure in effect revealing ultrasmall micropores (pores <2 nm in diameter) thereby giving the aerogel higher surface area. By starting with a dense aerogel and etching it in this way, a better electrical conductivity and higher surface area is attained than if a low density aerogel was prepared directly through dilution of the gel precursor solution. Another method to improve electrical conductivity in carbon aerogels is to introduce conductive materials into the aerogels, such as doping them with metals.
Transmission Electron Micrograph of Iron-Doped Carbon Aerogel Since the chemistry for doping the gels is done in water, a number of metals can be used to prepare metal-doped carbon aerogels including iron, cobalt, nickel, and copper.
Carbon Nanotubes Grown Directly on an Fe-Doped Carbon Aerogel In 2005, Aerogel.orgs own Stephen Steiner at MIT and Dr. Ted Baumann at Lawrence Livermore discovered that by using a chemical vapor deposition technique, it was possible to grow carbon nanotubes from the nanoparticles in Fe-doped carbon aerogels, resulting in nanotube growth on the outer surfaces of the aerogels (but not inside the pores). Later the metal-doping technique was extended to virtually any metal on the periodic table and it was found that using metal-doped carbon aerogels it was possible to grow nanotubes from a number of metal catalysts previously not known to catalyze nanotube growth.
materials involve a high-surface area carbon substrate with a conformal coating of a dielectric upon which is a conformal conductor coating-effectively intertwining two conductive aerogels in the same volume! Dr. Ted Baumann at Lawrence Livermore has been doing some very interesting work on hydrogen storage on carbon aerogels, and has found high-surface-area carbon aerogels to be an effective storage medium for hydrogen (although not quite at room temperature yet). Lots more developments to come from carbon aerogels in the near future. Stay linked!