Aerogel has gone through three industrializations since its discovery, and is currently in the rapid development of the fourth wave of industrialization. Aerogel was born in 1931, and Steven.S.Kistler published "Copolymerization and Diffusion Aerogel and Jelly" in Nature magazine, marking the discovery of aerogel. It was also Kistler who first prepared the world's first aerogel - SiO2 aerogel through ethanol supercritical drying technology.
The first industrialization occurred in the early 1940s, but due to high costs, the first industrialization ultimately failed. Monsanto Corp. of the United States cooperated with Kistler to produce an aerogel powder called Santocel, which was used as cosmetics, silicone rubber additives, napalm thickeners, etc. However, due to high manufacturing costs and lagging application development, Monsanto terminated the aerogel project in the 1970s.
In the second wave of industrialization, typical representatives of different technical directions emerged. (1) In 1984, Swedish Airglass used methanol supercritical technology, and the material was used in Cherenkov detectors; (2) In 1989, American Thermalux used CO₂ supercritical technology, but the project was terminated due to poor management; (3) In 1992, German Hoechst used atmospheric pressure drying technology to produce aerogel powder, promoting its application in thermal insulation coatings, matting agents and other fields; (4) In 2003, Tongji University began to publish research papers on atmospheric pressure drying, and Chinese technical workers gradually increased their investment in the field of atmospheric pressure drying.
The third industrialization occurred in the early 21st century, and the famous Aspen Aerogel and Cabot companies were born in this industrialization. In 1999, the American Aspen Systems company took over the project of NASA and successfully prepared fiber-composite aerogel super insulation materials. In 2001, Aspen Aerogel was officially established to carry out the commercial operation of aerogel, and began to promote the application of aerogel insulation felt in the aerospace, military and petrochemical fields. This opened the third wave of aerogel material industrialization, and aerogel finally found a good commercial product model. In 2003, Cabot, a world-leading specialty chemicals and high-performance materials company, acquired Hoechst of Germany, mastered the production technology of preparing SiO2 aerogel materials by atmospheric pressure drying, and established an aerogel professional company. Its main products are aerogel powder particles, which are used as coating additives or filling layers in lighting glass. In 2004, domestic companies engaged in aerogel material industrialization research began to appear.
The fourth industrialization mainly occurred in China. With the reduction of aerogel process costs and the continuous expansion of the industry scale, some emerging applications have been continuously developed, and the aerogel market has become increasingly mature. Since 2010, the first batch of domestic aerogel manufacturers have successfully opened up the application market of industrial equipment pipeline energy saving, new energy vehicle safety protection, rail transit carriages and ship hull fire insulation and heat preservation. In 2017, my country issued the national standard "Nanoporous Aerogel Composite Insulation Products" (GB/T34336-2017); in the same year, aerogel was included in the national key energy-saving and low-carbon technology promotion catalog. In 2019, my country's aerogel production was 78,200 cubic meters, and the scale of my country's aerogel market in 2019 was about 1.123 billion yuan.