Preparation and Thermal Stability of Quartz Fiber Reinforced Silicon Doped Aluminum Aerogel Composites

Abstract

Abstract Aerogel composites have drawn great attention as innovative thermal insulation materials in the field of thermal protection. In this study, quartz fiber reinforced silicon doped aluminum aerogel composites were synthesized using aluminum chloride hexahydrate (AlCl3·6H2O) and tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) co-precursor by sol-gel and supercritical fluid drying. The composites were characterized by FTIR, BET, SEM and Quartz lamp simulation test. The results showed that quartz fiber reinforced aerogel composites exhibited low density, low thermal conductivity and high temperature thermal stability. The thermal conductivities of composites increased from 0.025 W·m−1·K−1 at 150°C to 0.121 W·m−1·K−1 at 1200°C. The as-prepared composites exhibited high specific surface area (515 m2/g) with low density of 0.23 g/cm3. After being heated to 1000°C and 1200°C for 2 h, the surface area of composites reached to 217 and 68 m2/g, respectively. The aerogel composites with 25mm thickness was evaluated by quartz lamp at 1200°C for 1500 seconds. The back surface temperature of 732.7°C demonstrated excellent heat insulation performance of the aerogel composites.