Testing & Analysis of Aerogels

The hydrophobicity of aerogels is a critical parameter for many of their applications and is closely related to the functional groups on their surface. Alfa Chemistry provides customers with professional hydrophobicity analysis services for aerogels by weight difference method, Karl Fischer (K-F) titration method, liquid drop contact angle method, etc.

Pore structure is one of the most important features of aerogels and often connected with their final applications such as thermal insulation and biomedical applications. Gas sorption and thermoporometry (TPM) are universal tools for measuring pore size and pore size distribution (PSD), and mercury porosimetry is used to measure surface area, pore volume, etc.

Application of aerogels such as Kaon aerogel Cerenkov detector and aerogel glass depends on their optical properties, i.e. transparency. The most commonly used method for analyzing the optical properties of aerogels is the integrating sphere method, which determines the spectral normal-hemispherical transmittance and reflectance.

Thermal insulation performance of aerogels is evaluated by their thermal conductivity, which is calculated by decoupling method, equivalent circuit method and numerical simulation method, and tested by heat conduction heating test method, infrared radiation heating test method, and convection heating test method.