The thermal and acoustic properties of innovative insulating systems used as building coatings were investigated: Granular silica aerogel was mixed with natural plaster in different percentages. This coating solution is transpiring and insulating, thanks to the use of a natural lime coat and aerogel, a highly porous light material with very low thermal conductivity. The thermal conductivity of ...

Introduction: The NASA Stardust mission is expected to collect in low-density, silica aerogel more than 1,000 dust particles >10 μm in size from the dust coma surrounding Comet Wild-2. It is planned that Stardust will return these samples to Earth early in 2006. Removal of each particle from the aerogel increases the possibility of contamination or loss, thus we are developing a facility to per...

A novel composite adsorbent, Silica aerogel activated carbon was synthesized by sol-gel process atambient pressure drying method. The composite was characterized by Fourier transform infraredspectroscopy (FT-IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), differential scanning calorimetry(DSC) and Nitrogen adsorption / desorption isotherms (BET).In the present study, the mentioned adsorbent was used m...

We have investigated the dissipation (Q-1) using the torsion pendulum technique for pure 3He and 3He-4He mixtures in silica aerogel near the 3He superfluid transition (T(c)) in aerogel. With pure 3He the Q-1 decreases at the onset of superfluidity. When phase separated 3He-4He mixtures are introduced into the aerogel, the Q-1 does not decrease as rapidly and eventually increases for the highest...

Electric double layer capacitors, also called supercapacitors, ultracapacitors, and electrochemical capacitors, are gaining increasing popularity in high power energy storage applications. Novel carbon materials with high surface area, high electrical conductivity, as well as a range of shapes, sizes and pore size distributions are being constantly developed and tested as potential supercapacit...