Design and Performance Comparison of Polymer-Derived Ceramic Ambigels and Aerogels

This work reports the synthesis and characterization of preceramic- and polymer-derived SiOC aerogels obtained from a commercial siloxane resin. The preceramic aerogels were obtained by ambient pressure drying (ambigels) and CO₂ supercritical drying. Despite different drying processes, the final ceramic ambi/aerogels have very similar microstructural features in density, porosity, pore size, and specific surface area. Both materials have shown promising results for oil sorption and water cleaning. Supercritically dried-SiOC aerogel had low thermal conductivity with 0.046 W·m^-1·K^-1 at RT and 0.073 W·m^-1·K^-1 at 500 °C. These results suggest that substituting the rather complicated and expensive CO₂-SC drying with the more friendly and cheap ambient pressure drying can be done without having to accept significant microstructural/property degradation.