Mechanical and thermal-insulating performance of silica aerogel enhanced jointly with glass fiber and fumed silica by a facile compressing technique

We presented a facile compressing approach to prepare glass fiber and fumed silica jointly enhanced silica aerogel composite. The results show that as-prepared composite has a high flexural modulus of 2.65 MPa with low thermal conductivity of 0.0226 W/m·K. The reason is that the silica aerogel particles merged into the space of the fumed silica strengthening the porous texture of the silica aerogel, and they adhered to the glass fiber (GF) surface tightly resulting in the strong connection of GF with the silica aerogel. This simple method can produce the silica aerogel composite cost-efficiently and enable its wide practical application.