Mesoporous polyurethane aerogels for thermal superinsulation: Textural properties and thermal conductivity

Abstract : Organic aerogels based on polyurethane were elaborated via sol-gel synthesis and dried with supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2). The influence of the catalyst concentration was investigated, first in order to decrease the reaction kinetics, then to study its impact on the obtained materials properties. It was shown that this parameter also influences the global shrinkage and the bulk density of the resulting materials. Its effect on the dry materials was studied in terms of morphological, textural and thermal properties in order to determine the main correlations thanks to scanning electron microscopy (SEM), nitrogen adsorption, non-intrusive mercury porosimetry and thermal conductivity measurements. Results allowed us to demonstrate a correlation between the bulk density, the texture and the thermal conductivity of this family of polyurethane aerogels and to determine an optimal density range for thermal performance associated with a fine internal mesoporous texture.