Introduction: The STARDUST spacecraft captured dust samples from Comet 81P/Wild 2 at a relative velocity of 6.1 km⋅s in a low density silica aerogel and returned them to the Earth. One of the main of the scientific goals established for the mission was to determine whether comets contained complex organic materials and, contingently, the nature and abundance of this material. [1] Although conta...

Although silica aerogel is expected to be the material for energy savings, the lack of the strength prevents from commercial applications such as to low-density thermal insulators and acoustic absorbents. To improve mechanical properties, methyltrimethoxysilane (MTMS) and dimethyldimethoxysilane (DMDMS) are used as the co-precursor of aerogels in this study because the network becomes flexible ...

Reduced graphene oxide-magnetite hybrid aerogels attract great interest thanks to their potential applications, e.g., as magnetic actuators. However, the tendency of magnetite particles to migrate within the matrix and, ultimately, escape from the aerogel structure, remains a technological challenge. In this article we show that coating magnetite particles with polydopamine anchors them on grap...

Nickel has several industrial uses and is a valuable metal, making its selective separation recycling priority goal. A novel adsorbent, Schiff base organically modified silica (ORMOSIL) aerogel, was prepared, for nickel removal from wastewater with other metal ions, by including salen ionophore in the silica-based network. The newly developed adsorbent takes advantage of salen’s selectivity hig...

Layered double hydroxides (LDHs) have been widely used as an important subset of solid base catalysts. However, developing low-cost, small-sized LDH nanoparticles with enhanced surface catalytic sites remains a challenge. In this work, silica aerogel (SA)-supported, small-sized Mg-Al LDH nanosheets were successfully prepared by one-pot coprecipitation of Mg and Al ions in an alkaline suspension...

We report on electron identification methods and their performance in the Belle experiment at the KEK-B asymmetric B-Factory e+e− storage ring. Electrons are selected using a likelihood approach that takes information from the electromagnetic calorimeter, the central drift chamber, and the silica aerogel Cherenkov counters as input. We achieve an electron identification efficiency of (92.4±0.4)...