Making a remarkable material even better

Professor Evelyn Wang (right), graduate student Elise Strobach (left), and their colleagues have been performing theoretical and experimental studies of low-cost silica aerogels optimized to serve as a transparent heat barrier in specific devices.

Credit: Stuart Darsch

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In brief

After five years&#; work, an MIT team can now fabricate a transparent version of a silica aerogel, an ultralight material that blocks heat transfer. They have used their aerogel in a solar thermal collector to generate temperatures suitable for water and space heating and more&#;without using the expensive concentrators, special materials, and vacuum enclosures that have kept current solar thermal systems from being widely adopted. They have also demonstrated that inserting an aerogel into the gap in a double-pane window will make a product that&#;s both affordable and highly insulating. Finally, their work has generated guidelines that will help innovators design and fabricate aerogels with nanoscale structures tailored for high performance in other critical technologies.

In recent decades, the search for high-performance thermal insulation for buildings has prompted manufacturers to turn to aerogels. Invented in the s, these remarkable materials are translucent, ultraporous, lighter than a marshmallow, strong enough to support a brick, and an unparalleled barrier to heat flow, so ideal for keeping heat inside on a cold winter day and outside when summer temperatures soar.

Graduate student Elise Strobach displays a sample silica aerogel that&#;s clear enough to see through. She is now developing aerogel panes that will fit inside today&#;s double-pane windows so they can easily be incorporated into existing production lines. Credit: Stuart Darsch

Five years ago, researchers led by Evelyn Wang, a professor and head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Gang Chen, the Carl Richard Soderberg Professor in Power Engineering, set out to add one more property to that list. They aimed to make a silica aerogel that was truly transparent.

&#;We started out trying to realize an optically transparent, thermally insulating aerogel for solar thermal systems,&#; says Wang. Incorporated into a solar thermal collector, a slab of aerogel would allow sunshine to come in unimpeded but prevent heat from coming back out&#;a key problem in today&#;s systems. And if the transparent aerogel were sufficiently clear, it could be incorporated into windows, where it would act as a good heat barrier but still allow occupants to see out.

Lin Zhao PhD &#;19 formulated a model that guides the development of aerogels with transparency, clarity, and thermal insulation tailored for specific applications. Photo courtesy of Lin Zhao

When the researchers started their work, even the best aerogels weren&#;t up to those tasks. &#;People had known for decades that aerogels are a good thermal insulator, but they hadn&#;t been able to make them very optically transparent,&#; says Lin Zhao PhD &#;19 of mechanical engineering. &#;So in our work, we&#;ve been trying to understand exactly why they&#;re not very transparent and then how we can improve their transparency.&#;

Aerogels: Opportunities and challenges

The remarkable properties of a silica aerogel are the result of its nanoscale structure. To visualize that structure, think of holding a pile of small, clear particles in your hand. Imagine that the particles touch one another and slightly stick together, leaving gaps between them that are filled with air. Similarly, in a silica aerogel, clear, loosely connected nanoscale silica particles form a three-dimensional solid network within an overall structure that is mostly air. Because of all that air, a silica aerogel has an extremely low density&#;in fact, one of the lowest densities of any known bulk material&#;yet it&#;s solid and structurally strong, though brittle.

If a silica aerogel is made of transparent particles and air, why isn&#;t it transparent? Because the light that enters doesn&#;t all pass straight through. It is diverted whenever it encounters an interface between a solid particle and the air surrounding it. The diagram below illustrates the process. When light enters the aerogel, some is absorbed inside it. Some&#;called direct transmittance&#;travels straight through. And some is redirected along the way by those interfaces. It can be scattered many times and in any direction, ultimately exiting the aerogel at an angle. If it exits from the surface through which it entered, it is called diffuse reflectance; if it exits from the other side, it is called diffuse transmittance.

Light transmission through an aerogel Some incident light is absorbed within the aerogel or passes straight through and emerges from the other side&#;labeled above as &#;direct transmittance.&#; The remainder can be redirected every time it encounters a particle-pore interface, which means it can be scattered many times in multiple directions before it emerges as &#;diffuse reflectance&#; or &#;diffuse transmittance,&#; depending on which surface the light exits the aerogel from. Making a transparent aerogel requires maximizing all the light that is transmitted, both direct and diffuse. Making it clear enough to be used in a window requires minimizing the diffuse portion of the total. Credit: Lin Zhao, MIT

To make an aerogel for a solar thermal system, the researchers needed to maximize the total transmittance: the direct plus the diffuse components. And to make an aerogel for a window, they needed to maximize the total transmittance and simultaneously minimize the fraction of the total that is diffuse light. &#;Minimizing the diffuse light is critical because it&#;ll make the window look cloudy,&#; says Zhao. &#;Our eyes are very sensitive to any imperfection in a transparent material.&#;

Developing a model

The sizes of the nanoparticles and the pores between them have a direct impact on the fate of light passing through an aerogel. But figuring out that interaction by trial and error would require synthesizing and characterizing too many samples to be practical. &#;People haven&#;t been able to systematically understand the relationship between the structure and the performance,&#; says Zhao. &#;So we needed to develop a model that would connect the two.&#;

To begin, Zhao turned to the radiative transport equation, which describes mathematically how the propagation of light (radiation) through a medium is affected by absorption and scattering. It is generally used for calculating the transfer of light through the atmospheres of Earth and other planets. As far as Wang knows, it has not been fully explored for the aerogel problem.

Both scattering and absorption can reduce the amount of light transmitted through an aerogel, and light can be scattered multiple times. To account for those effects, the model decouples the two phenomena and quantifies them separately&#;and for each wavelength of light.

Based on the sizes of the silica particles and the density of the sample (an indicator of total pore volume), the model calculates light intensity within an aerogel layer by determining its absorption and scattering behavior using predictions from electromagnetic theory. Using those results, it calculates how much of the incoming light passes directly through the sample and how much of it is scattered along the way and comes out diffuse.

The next task was to validate the model by comparing its theoretical predictions with experimental results.

Synthesizing aerogels

Working in parallel, graduate student Elise Strobach of mechanical engineering had been learning how best to synthe­-size aerogel samples&#;both to guide development of the model and ultimately to validate it. In the process, she produced new insights on how to synthesize an aerogel with a specific desired structure.

Her procedure starts with a common form of silicon called silane, which chemically reacts with water to form an aerogel. During that reaction, tiny nucleation sites occur where particles begin to form. How fast they build up determines the end structure. To control the reaction, she adds a catalyst, ammonia. By carefully selecting the ammonia-to-silane ratio, she gets the silica particles to grow quickly at first and then abruptly stop growing when the precursor materials are gone&#;a means of producing particles that are small and uniform. She also adds a solvent, methanol, to dilute the mixture and control the density of the nucleation sites, thus the pores between the particles.

The reaction between the silane and water forms a gel containing a solid nanostructure with interior pores filled with the solvent. To dry the wet gel, Strobach needs to get the solvent out of the pores and replace it with air&#;without crushing the delicate structure. She puts the aerogel into the pressure chamber of a critical point dryer and floods liquid CO2 into the chamber. The liquid CO2 flushes out the solvent and takes its place inside the pores. She then slowly raises the temperature and pressure inside the chamber until the liquid CO2 transforms to its supercritical state, where the liquid and gas phases can no longer be differentiated. Slowly venting the chamber releases the CO2 and leaves the aerogel behind, now filled with air. She then subjects the sample to 24 hours of annealing&#;a standard heat-treatment process&#;which slightly reduces scatter without sacrificing the strong thermal insulating behavior. Even with the 24 hours of annealing, her novel procedure shortens the required aerogel synthesis time from several weeks to less than four days.

Validating and using the model

To validate the model, Strobach fabricated samples with carefully controlled thicknesses, densities, and pore and particle sizes&#;as determined by small-angle X-ray scattering&#;and used a standard spectrophotometer to measure the total and diffuse transmittance.

The data confirmed that, based on measured physical properties of an aerogel sample, the model could calculate total transmittance of light as well as a measure of clarity called haze, defined as the fraction of total transmittance that is made up of diffuse light.

The exercise confirmed simplifying assumptions made by Zhao in developing the model. Also, it showed that the radiative properties are independent of sample geometry, so his model can simulate light transport in aerogels of any shape. And it can be applied not just to aerogels but to any porous materials.

Wang notes what she considers the most important insight from the modeling and experimental results: &#;Overall, we determined that the key to getting high transparency and minimal haze&#;without reducing thermal insulating capability&#;is to have particles and pores that are really small and uniform in size,&#; she says.

One analysis demonstrates the change in behavior that can come with a small change in particle size. Many applications call for using a thicker piece of transparent aerogel to better block heat transfer. But increasing thickness may decrease transparency. The figures below show total transmittance (top) and haze (bottom) in aerogel samples of increasing thickness and fixed density. The curves represent model results for samples with different particle sizes. As thickness increases, the samples with particles of 6 nanometer (nm) and 9 nm radius quickly do worse on both transmittance and haze. In contrast, the performance of the samples with particles of 3 nm radius remains essentially unchanged. As long as particle size is small, increasing thickness to achieve greater thermal insulation will not significantly decrease total transmittance or increase haze.

Effects of sample thickness on performance These figures show total transmittance (top) and haze (bottom) in aerogel samples as sample thickness increases. (Density in all samples is 200 kilograms per cubic meter.) The curves show results assuming nanoparticles with a mean particle radius of 3 nanometers (nm, black), 6 nm (red), and 9 nm (blue). As thickness increases, samples made with 6 nm and 9 nm particles show a decrease in total transmittance and an increase in haze. In contrast, with the 3 nm particles, increasing thickness to increase thermal insulation has little effect on total transmittance or haze.

Comparing aerogels from MIT and elsewhere

How much difference does their approach make? The figure below shows total transmittance and haze from three MIT samples (with different thicknesses) and from nine state-of-the-art silica aerogels, which typically have particles and pores that are as large as 10 nm and vary widely in size, which gives most aerogels a slightly blue tint, notes Wang.

Comparison of performance by MIT and state-of-the-art silica aerogels The data points show total transmittance and haze from three MIT samples and nine state-of-the-art silica aerogels. An aerogel that is 100% transparent with 0% haze would fall in the bottom right corner of this plot. The MIT samples do best&#;even when compared to single-pane glass, which is represented by the green bar. (Sources for the non-MIT data can be found in Optics Express, as cited at the end of this article.)

In the figure, the ideal transparent aerogel&#;one with 0% haze and 100% total transmittance&#;would appear in the bottom right corner. Only the MIT aerogel samples fall in that vicinity. The green bar represents common glass. The MIT samples have significantly better optical properties, with haze about the same and transmittance even greater than glass. &#;Our aerogels are more transparent than glass because they don&#;t reflect&#;they don&#;t have that glare spot where the glass catches the light and reflects to you,&#; says Strobach.

To Lin, a main contribution of their work is the development of general guidelines for material design, as demonstrated by the figure below. Aided by such a &#;design map,&#; users can tailor an aerogel for a particular application. Based on the contour plots, they can determine the combinations of controllable aerogel properties&#;namely, density and particle size&#;needed to achieve a targeted haze and transmittance outcome for many applications.

Design map: Performance as a function of mean particle radius and density These figures show total transmittance (top) and haze (bottom) as a function of mean particle radius and aerogel density. The contour plots show the particle size and density&#;two controllable properties&#;that are required to achieve a targeted transmittance and haze. The figure thus provides a &#;design map&#; that can be used to tailor a transparent aerogel for a particular application.

Aerogels in solar thermal collectors

The researchers have already demonstrated the value of their new aerogels for solar thermal energy conversion systems, which convert sunlight into thermal energy by absorbing radiation and transforming it into heat. Current solar thermal systems can produce thermal energy at so-called intermediate temperatures&#;between 120°C and 220°C&#;which can be used for water and space heating, steam generation, industrial processes, and more. Indeed, in , U.S. consumption of thermal energy exceeded the total electricity generation from all renewable sources.

However, state-of-the-art solar thermal systems rely on expensive optical systems to concentrate the incoming sunlight, specially designed surfaces to absorb radiation and retain heat, and costly and difficult-to-maintain vacuum enclosures to keep that heat from escaping. To date, the costs of those components have limited market adoption.

Zhao and his colleagues thought that using a transparent aerogel layer might solve those problems. Placed above the absorber, it could let through incident solar radiation and then prevent the heat from escaping. So it would essentially replicate the natural greenhouse effect that&#;s causing global warming&#;but to an extreme degree, on a small scale, and with a positive outcome.

To try it out, the researchers designed an aerogel-based solar thermal receiver (see photo below). The device consists of a nearly &#;blackbody&#; absorber (a thin copper sheet coated with black paint that absorbs all radiant energy that falls on it), and above it a stack of optimized, low-scattering silica aerogel blocks, which efficiently transmit sunlight and suppress conduction, convection, and radiation heat losses simultaneously. The nanostructure of the aerogel is tailored to maximize its optical trans­parency while maintaining its ultralow thermal conductivity. With the aerogel present, there is no need for expensive optics, surfaces, or vacuum enclosures.

To test the viability of an aerogel-enhanced solar thermal receiver, the researchers designed and built the device shown above. They started with a conventional blackbody absorber, which absorbs radiation and turns it into heat. Above the absorber they placed a stack of silica aerogel blocks, optimized to let sunlight in and prevent heat from escaping. The result was a low-cost, high-performance solar thermal system. Photo courtesy of the researchers

After extensive laboratory tests of the device, the researchers decided to test it &#;in the field&#;&#;in this case, on the roof of an MIT building. On a sunny day in winter, they set up their device, fixing the receiver toward the south and tilted 60° from horizontal to maximize solar exposure. They then monitored its performance between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Despite the cold ambient temperature (less than 1°C) and the presence of clouds in the afternoon, the temperature of the absorber started increasing right away and eventually stabilized above 220°C (see the figure below).

Field test of aerogel-enhanced solar thermal receiver These curves show the temperature achieved by the researchers&#; aerogel receiver under natural sunlight on a winter day between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Despite the cold ambient temperature (less than 1°C), the absorber in the system rapidly rose to above 220°C, and the receiver maintained its temperature even when the sky became cloudy during the afternoon. The experiment confirmed that the simple aerogel system could perform well&#;without costly optics, solar absorbers, or vacuum enclosures.

To Zhao, the performance already demonstrated by the artificial greenhouse effect opens up what he calls &#;an exciting pathway to the promotion of solar thermal energy utilization.&#; Already, he and his colleagues have demonstrated that it can convert water to steam that is greater than 120°C. In collaboration with researchers at IIT Bombay, they are now exploring possible process steam applications in India and performing field tests of a low-cost, completely passive solar autoclave for sterilizing medical equipment in rural communities.

Windows and more

Strobach has been pursuing another promising application for the transparent aerogel&#;in windows. &#;In trying to make more transparent aerogels, we hit a regime in our fabrication process where we could make things smaller, but it didn&#;t result in a significant change in the transparency,&#; she says. &#;But it did make a significant change in the clarity,&#; a key feature for a window.

The availability of an affordable, thermally insulating window would have several impacts, says Strobach. Every winter, windows in the United States lose enough energy to power over 50 million homes. That wasted energy costs the economy more than $32 billion a year and generates about 350 million tons of CO2&#;more than is emitted by 76 million cars. Consumers can choose high-efficiency triple-pane windows, but they&#;re so expensive that they&#;re not widely used.

A completed aerogel disk is carefully lifted out of the pressure vessel, its interior pores now filled with air. The disk is almost invisible on top of the metal mesh that supports it. Credit: Stuart Darsch

Analyses by Strobach and her colleagues showed that replacing the air gap in a conventional double-pane window with an aerogel pane could be the answer. The result could be a double-pane window that is 40% more insulating than traditional ones and 85% as insulating as today&#;s triple-pane windows&#;at less than half the price. Better still, the technology could be adopted quickly. The aerogel pane is designed to fit within the current two-pane manufacturing process that&#;s ubiquitous across the industry, so it could be manufactured at low cost on existing production lines with only minor changes.

Guided by Zhao&#;s model, the researchers are continuing to improve the performance of their aerogels, with a special focus on increasing clarity while maintaining transparency and thermal insulation. In addition, they are considering other traditional low-cost systems that would&#;like the solar thermal and window technologies&#;benefit from sliding in an optimized aerogel to create a high-performance heat barrier that lets in abundant sunlight.

This research was supported by the Full-Spectrum Optimized Conversion and Utilization of Sunlight (FOCUS) program of the U.S. Department of Energy&#;s Advanced Research Projects Agency&#;Energy (ARPA-E); the Solid-State Solar Thermal Energy Conversion (S3TEC) Center, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences; and the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design. Elise Strobach received funding from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Lin Zhao PhD &#;19 is now an optics design engineer at 3M in St. Paul, Minnesota. Further information about this research can be found in:

E. Strobach, B. Bhatia, S. Yang, L. Zhao, and E.N. Wang. &#;High temperature annealing for structural optimization of silica aerogels in solar thermal applications.&#; Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids, vol. 462, pp. 72&#;77, . Online: doi.org/10./j.jnoncrysol..02.009.

L. Zhao, B. Bhatia, S. Yang, E. Strobach, L.A. Weinstein, T.A. Cooper, G. Chen, and E.N. Wang. &#;Harnessing heat beyond 200°C from unconcentrated sunlight with nonevacuated transparent aerogels.&#; ACS Nano, vol. 13, pp. &#;, . Online: doi.org/10./acsnano.9b.

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L. Zhao, E. Strobach, B. Bhatia, S. Yang, A. Leroy, L. Zhang, and E.N. Wang. &#;Theoretical and experimental investigation of haze in transparent aerogels.&#; Optics Express, vol. 27, issue 4, pp. A39&#;A50, . Online: doi.org/10./OE.27.000A39.

This article appears in the Autumn issue of Energy Futures.

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NASA Technology

It&#;s no surprise that some of NASA&#;s biggest breakthroughs and most popular spinoffs have been in the field of temperature management. The Space Agency not only has to deal with the temperature extremes of space and atmospheric reentry but also must manage large amounts of cryogenic liquids on the ground.

It was for this latter application that a Kennedy Space Center engineer sought a new material in the early s. Aerogels, which are gels with all the water removed (and gel is almost entirely water), were already known to be the world&#;s most insulating materials, along with several other superlatives, but these ultra-lightweight, nanoporous materials were also brittle to the point of uselessness, as well as costly to make. James Fesmire, who was in charge of the systems that provide liquid hydrogen and oxygen fuel to rockets on Kennedy&#;s launch pads, put out a call for a flexible composite aerogel that could be used to better manage the transfer and handling of cryogenic rocket fuels.

Much has been made of the resulting insulation&#;s use in consumer goods (Spinoff , , , ), as well as a spinoff into building insulation (Spinoff ), but its most widespread use is in industrial applications, where it&#;s saved users thousands&#;in many cases millions&#;of dollars by conserving energy and reducing labor, replacement and repair costs, and downtime.

Technology Transfer

In , a company called Aspen Systems proposed a silica aerogel reinforced with ceramic fibers and won two Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts from Kennedy. The cookie-sized lab prototypes the company produced under that funding literally tested off the charts for insulation performance. Fesmire&#;s team had to invent a new device, dubbed Cryostat-1, to adequately assess the thermal performance of the next version Aspen created under follow-on SBIR contracts from Kennedy.

Less than half as conductive as even the best foam insulations, these blanket aerogels&#;the first flexible, practical aerogel insulation&#;were used in several critical applications. One, in , was in the cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen umbilical connections for the X-33, an experimental single-stage-to-orbit space launch vehicle.

Further gains were made under contract to Johnson Space Center in for use in spacesuits. For this job, the company substituted polyester fibers for the ceramic fibers, resulting in significant improvement, says George Gould, now the chief technology officer at Aspen Aerogels Inc., the company that spun off from Aspen Systems in to market this new type of insulation. The company continued working with NASA, undertaking almost three dozen SBIR contracts across most of NASA&#;s field centers over the next decade or so.

These days, Gould says, most of the Northborough, Massachusetts-based company&#;s work with NASA consists of supplying the Space Agency with the existing Aspen Aerogels products that NASA helped develop.

The company&#;s three basic product lines, high-temperature Pyrogels and mid- to low-temperature Spacelofts and Cryogels&#;all in the form of flexible blankets&#;were established in the company&#;s early years and are now installed in industrial plants, steam distribution systems, buildings, pipelines, and much more all over the world.

Benefits

One advantage of the company&#;s insulation is that it&#;s sturdy and easy to use, says Brian Cahill, director of marketing at Aspen Aerogels. &#;It&#;s flexible, insensitive to workmanship, it installs faster, and it&#;s low-maintenance.&#;

One Gulf Coast refinery replaced six-inch-thick calcium silicate insulation, a traditional high-temperature option, on a single yield line with less than three inches of Pyrogel&#;and estimated it saved $25,000 in labor alone. It was also able to restart sooner than expected, leading to additional savings.

Being thinner than other insulations due to its high thermal performance, the material allows for effective insulation in tight spaces and even saves money on shipping, handling, and storage. Pyrogel XTE, billed as the most effective high-temperature insulation on the market, is two to five times thinner than non-Pyrogel alternatives.

In the past, customers with high-temperature insulation needs were stuck with low-performance insulation, Cahill says. The best insulators used binders that oxidize at 400 or 500 °F, while those based on ceramic or silica fibers survive higher temperatures but are much less effective. But Pyrogel, with its silica aerogel reinforced with glass fibers and laced with infrared-scattering particles, offers high performance at temperatures up to 1,200 °F. &#;We&#;ve certainly redefined high-temperature insulation, and we&#;ve redefined the expectations of users across the world,&#; Cahill says.

The applications where Aspen Aerogels&#; insulations might hold the biggest advantage are steam distribution and other systems that are often exposed to water. Many municipalities, universities, and hospitals still use high-pressure steam for heating, cleaning, sterilization, humidification, and powering turbines and other systems. But the pipes that deliver steam are exposed to water in heavy rain and flooding.

Traditional insulation begins to disintegrate with repeated soaking, and the moisture causes the underlying pipes to corrode. It also cools the steam pipes, robbing them of their energy, and the insulation eventually has to be discarded and replaced at considerable expense. The corrosion causes safety issues and can even lead to explosions. It&#;s such a problem that many municipalities have given up on insulating steam pipes, Cahill says. &#;We think of insulation as a force for good, but badly designed insulation can be a force for crisis and havoc when it misbehaves.&#;

Gould notes that all of Aspen Aerogels&#; insulation is both water-repellant and breathable, meaning whatever moisture does get under it can quickly evaporate. &#;It has the fastest water-release response of any thermal insulation,&#; he says. It also maintains a pH level that inhibits corrosion.

Cahill notes that one medical institution, worried that it wouldn&#;t have enough steam to operate in a storm, had considered spending about $5 million to replace its steam equipment. Instead, it spent a few hundred thousand dollars replacing the pipe insulation with Pyrogel.

A South American petrochemical complex that replaced its steam line insulation with Pyrogel estimates it saves about $1.3 million worth of energy per year by avoiding insulation degradation.

&#;One customer described it as a pretty boring material, because it just stays where you put it,&#; says Cahill, noting that the company takes this as the highest compliment.

Cities with Pyrogel-insulated municipal steam distribution systems include New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Seattle, and Baltimore. Rainy Seattle had given up on insulating its steam pipes for 30 years before discovering this aerogel option.

Twenty-four of the world&#;s top 25 refineries use Aspen Aerogels insulation, as do most of the largest chemical companies.

Meanwhile, the company&#;s lower-temperature insulations, based on polyester fiber-reinforced aerogels, have also caught on. Its Spaceloft line is most commonly used to insulate buildings and subsea oil pipelines. Spaceloft lines more than 550 miles of subsea pipelines in more than 40 locations around the world. German chemical giant BASF has an exclusive deal with Aspen Aerogels making BASF the sole customer for the Spaceloft A2 product, which it uses in its Slentex wall system for the building materials market, as well as a complementary fireproof insulation.

And Cryogel, which is similarly durable and easy to apply and stays flexible at cryogenic temperatures, is also becoming popular, Cahill says, noting that in spring of the company won a $40 million contract to insulate a liquid natural gas receiving facility in Thailand with Cryogel. It&#;s an application that&#;s also catching on domestically, he says. &#;Liquid natural gas is quite a boom commodity at the moment, with the U.S. becoming an exporter.&#;

Other popular Cryogel applications include refrigeration, ethylene gas processing, and alkylation to upgrade petroleum or produce commodity chemicals.

Cahill notes that it&#;s rare for a company to specialize in both high-heat and cryogenic insulation. &#;I don&#;t think anyone else participates in both extremes of the spectrum.&#;

In addition to countless industrial and consumer goods applications, Aspen Aerogels&#; insulations are also popular in cars and other vehicles. Cahill notes that many German auto manufacturers buy large quantities of aerogel but don&#;t publicize their proprietary use of the materials. &#;We know we&#;re installed in pretty much every Formula 1 car,&#; he adds.

The company also has worked extensively with the military and supplies insulation to the Navy, Air Force, and Missile Defense Agency, although these agencies don&#;t report back what they use it for.

And the extensive work with NASA promises new future products. Working across several NASA field centers, the company has developed, for example, polyimide-based aerogels, hybrid aerogel/multilayer reflective insulations, and ablative aerogels for heat shields for atmospheric reentry.

Gould says the work on polyimide aerogels has been key to a carbon aerogel that&#;s now in late-stage development. &#;We have a treasure trove of technologies creeping their way to commercialization,&#; he says.

As transportation moves toward electrical power, the company is also working on an insulation optimized for batteries, capacitors, and other components of electrical systems. &#;We&#;re pretty excited about the future of nanoporous materials for energy generation, conservation, and storage,&#; Gould says. &#;Insulation never goes out of fashion. No matter what you&#;re generating energy from, you&#;re still going to need to preserve temperature gradients.&#;

He also notes that the company is open to partnerships with other entities that might have new applications for its insulations. &#;The number of things aerogel can do is astonishing. We don&#;t know all the needs out there.&#;

Aspen Aerogels now employs about 300 people to manufacture almost 40 million square feet of insulation per year, about twice what it was producing in . The company&#;s revenue totaled more than $104 million.

&#;We&#;re growing, and we think there&#;s a lot of good stuff to come,&#; Gould says. He says the company&#;s first years of product development with NASA were instrumental to its success. &#;That early work set the bar for what we could aspire to. I always say, if it&#;s good enough for NASA, it&#;s good enough for anyone on the planet.&#;

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