Materials Science and Engineering

Silica aerogels have been regarded as an attractive material because of its properties such as high surface area, low thermal conductivity, low density and low index of refraction. In recent year, silica aerogels are being used in widespread applications. However, its properties such as powdery properties, mechanical properties make them hard to apply in industrial field. There are many researches to improve its mechanical properties such as for example, compounding with polymers, fibers, carbons, silane coupling agent and other materials. In this study, we tried to synthesized precursor consisted of polyethyleneimine (PEI) and triethoxy (3-isocyanatopropyl)silane (IPTES). After synthesizing, precursor was characterized by FT-IR, NMR. From this precursor (PEI-IPTES), we synthesized silica gel by sol-gel method. To check PEI-IPTES gel properties such as thermal stability, and thermal conductivity, Thermogravimetric analysis and thermal conductivity analyzer were used.