Introduction: The Stardust mission brought to earth samples from the comet 81P/ Wild 2. The cometary material is believed to be the most primitive material in the solar system and the return of the samples provides information about the prevailing conditions of the early solar system. The samples have been trapped in silica aerogel at 6.1km.s and the hypervelocity impacts have generated deceler...

Superhydrophobicity and self-cleaning require a combination of surface topography and low-energy surfaces, where mechanical damage of the topography or contamination with oils lead to loss of the nonwetting properties. We show that such vulnerability can be solved by superamphiphobic (i.e., both superhydrophobic and superoleophobic) surfactant-coated aerogel surfaces. Using silica aerogels as m...

We present the results of high magnetic field experiments in pure $^{3}\mathrm{He}$ (in absence $^{4}\mathrm{He}$ coverage) nematic aerogel. In this case aerogel strands are covered with few atomic layers solid paramagnetic $^{3}\mathrm{He}$, which enables spin-exchange mechanism for quasiparticles scattering. Our earlier NMR showed that low fields, instead polar phase, $A$ phase is expected to...

Silica monolith aerogels with different degrees of hydrophobicity by incorporating methyltrimethoxysilane (MTMS) or trimethylethoxysilane (TMES) in standard sol-gel synthesis were prepared. Excellent properties of the aerogels, obtained with the sol-gel synthesis, were preserved with supercritical drying with CO2. The degree of the hydrophobicity of the aerogels was tested by measuring the cont...

The diffusion of methane confined in nano-porous carbon aerogel with the average pore size 48 Å and porosity 60% was investigated as a function of pressure at T = 298 K using quasi-elastic neutron scattering (QENS). The diffusivity of methane shows a clear effect of confinement: it is about two orders of magnitude lower than in bulk at the same thermodynamic conditions and is close to the diffu...

Introduction: In 2006, NASA’s Stardust mission returned a capsule to Earth with particles collected from the coma of comet 81P/Wild 2. Cometary particles were collected by impact into low-density silica aerogel at a relative velocity of 6.1 km/s [1]. Upon impacting the aerogel, particles left behind tracks of melted and compressed aerogel and void space, shedding material along the way. In orde...