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Aerogels, Silica Aerogel and Aerogel Composites
From an extraordinary material to an industrial solution — how silica aerogel composites and fiber-reinforced blankets enable demanding applications in batteries, aerospace, oil & gas, construction and electronics.
What is an aerogel?
An aerogel is a highly porous solid in which most of the volume is occupied by air. Despite the name, it is not a gel in its final state — it is a dry solid with an extremely open internal structure, made of interconnected nanoscale pores.
This architecture is why aerogels have drawn interest for decades. They combine very low density with extremely low thermal conductivity, because heat struggles to travel through both the thin solid skeleton and the tiny air-filled pores. In practical terms, aerogels are among the most efficient solid thermal insulation materials known. The idea is simple. The engineering is not.
Aerogels are typically produced by forming a wet gel, then removing the liquid from its pore network without collapsing the solid structure. NASA famously used aerogel in the Stardust mission to capture high-speed comet particles, which is part of why the material acquired a slightly mythic reputation. But the more interesting story today is how aerogel has been transformed into usable industrial products.
Why silica aerogel matters
Many types of aerogel exist — carbon, polymer and metal oxide aerogels among them. Of these, silica aerogel is the most established and widely used. Based on silicon dioxide (chemically related to glass or quartz) but with a radically different nanostructured porous network, its thermal performance comes from three combined effects: very low solid conduction, limited gas conduction within nanoscale pores, and suppressed convection.
The result is exceptionally low thermal conductivity. Commercial aerogel insulation products are often used where designers need high insulation performance in a thin, lightweight or space-constrained format.
The problem with raw aerogel
Pure silica aerogel is fascinating, but fascination is not enough for industry. Traditional monoliths are brittle, dusty and difficult to handle. In powder, granule or particle form, aerogel can be used as an additive — but this shifts the engineering burden to the customer, who must disperse it, bind it, process it, protect it, integrate it and qualify it.
Raw aerogel is a material input. An aerogel composite is an engineered solution.
Sold as powder or granules, aerogel can improve coatings, plasters, renders, boards and fillers — important in construction materials and specialty insulation. But it is not always right for demanding applications where geometry, repeatability, mechanical handling, fire exposure, compression behavior, dust control and qualification consistency matter. For those, engineers don’t want a promising powder. They want a part, sheet, blanket or thermal barrier that can be specified, cut, installed, tested and integrated.
What is a silica aerogel composite?
A silica aerogel composite combines aerogel with another material to make it easier to handle, stronger, more flexible, less dusty or more directly usable. The most common industrial concept combines silica aerogel with a fiber-based substrate: the fibers provide mechanical integrity, the aerogel provides thermal performance. The result is a flexible blanket, sheet or mat that preserves much of aerogel’s thermal advantage while becoming far more practical.
In a well-designed composite, the fiber network is not just packaging — it is part of the product architecture. It helps the material survive bending, cutting, installation, vibration, compression and repeated handling, and allows manufacturing in formats engineers can actually use: rolls, sheets, die-cut parts, multilayer assemblies or application-specific thermal barriers. This is the key transition in the aerogel industry: from admiring aerogel as an exceptional substance to engineering it into ready-to-use components.
Raw additive vs. ready-to-use composite
Raw aerogel as an additive
Powders or granules used to modify another material: aerogel-enhanced plasters and renders, insulation boards, coatings, cavity fills, lightweight insulating formulations and specialty construction products. Effective when the customer has formulation expertise — but they are still buying an ingredient. See our Kwark® granules & powders.
Ready-to-use composite
A composite sheet or blanket is closer to a finished engineering material — handled by designers, integrators and production teams without requiring them to become aerogel formulators. Especially valuable for demanding applications: battery thermal runaway containment, aircraft systems, spacecraft, compact electronics, harsh industrial installations. See Skogar® aerogel composite sheets.
Early industrial adoption: oil & gas
One of the most important early commercial markets for aerogel insulation was oil & gas — not accidentally. The infrastructure creates exactly the kind of problem where aerogel makes sense: long pipe runs, high or low temperatures, corrosion concerns, offshore constraints, cryogenic service, limited space, and a direct economic penalty when insulation underperforms.
Aerogel blankets have been used for pipe insulation, subsea systems, refineries and LNG infrastructure. Their low thermal conductivity allows thinner insulation; their flexibility helps installation around complex geometries. Commercial aerogel blankets were already being implemented by the 2000s, including in cryogenic and pipe-in-pipe insulation contexts. It proved aerogel composites could move beyond laboratory samples into practical industrial use.
Construction: useful, but not the whole story
Buildings need insulation, space is often limited, and renovation or historic projects may not allow thick layers. Aerogel-enhanced plasters, boards, blankets, renders and glazing materials can be valuable where conventional insulation is too thick or thermal bridges must be addressed in compact details.
But construction also shows the limits of treating aerogel only as an additive: the market is cost-sensitive, conservative and shaped by building codes and long qualification cycles. The strategically interesting development today is not “put aerogel into everything” — it’s the emergence of engineered composites for applications where conventional materials cannot meet the combined requirements of thermal performance, thickness, weight, fire behavior and integration.
The rise of fiber-reinforced aerogel blankets
The most important industrial evolution of silica aerogel is the move toward reinforced composite formats, especially blankets made with fiber substrates. A blanket is not just a softer version of aerogel — it’s a different product category: flexible enough to wrap, cut or conform; mechanically stronger than raw aerogel; easier to integrate; available in thin sheets or rolls; and more consistent for qualification and procurement.
The fiber substrate varies with the application — glass fiber, oxidized PAN, silica fiber or other systems. Final properties depend not only on the aerogel but on reinforcement, binder, surface treatment, thickness, density, hydrophobicity, dust behavior and temperature range. Two aerogel blankets can both contain silica aerogel and still behave very differently in a real system. Thermal conductivity matters, but so do compression behavior, flame exposure, aging, vibration resistance, outgassing and moisture behavior.
Demanding applications
Batteries: thermal barriers for high-energy systems
As lithium-ion packs become more energy-dense, thermal safety becomes central. When a cell fails, the objective is to prevent or delay heat transfer to neighboring cells — thermal runaway propagation. Aerogel-based thermal barriers are attractive because they provide strong insulation in very thin layers, where every millimeter competes with cells, busbars, cooling plates and sensors. They may be used between cells, between modules, between pack and passenger compartment, or in multilayer fire-protection assemblies. The goal is not to “insulate” in the building sense — it’s to control heat flow during abnormal, high-energy events while fitting a constrained mechanical design.
Aerospace & defense: performance per millimeter and per kilogram
Aircraft, spacecraft, satellites, launch vehicles and defense systems face harsh thermal constraints with strict mass and thickness budgets. Aerogel composites are relevant for aircraft thermal and fire barriers, propulsion-adjacent insulation, cryogenic insulation, spacecraft thermal control, infrared signature management and lightweight insulation for advanced mobility. The value proposition is not simply “better insulation” — it’s performance per millimeter and per kilogram, which translates directly into design freedom.
Electronics: thermal management in compact devices
Modern devices generate heat in dense architectures. The issue is often not only how to remove heat, but how to prevent it from reaching the wrong place. Aerogel composites can isolate sensitive components, protect users from hot surfaces and manage thermal separation inside compact assemblies — in power modules, sensors, wearables, high-performance computing and industrial electronics. In electronics, thickness is the enemy: meaningful thermal resistance at sub-millimeter scale unlocks design options bulk insulation cannot.
Why “ready-to-use” changes the economics
Technical performance is only half the story; the other half is industrial usability. A raw-material supplier sells potential. A composite supplier sells usable performance. This affects the whole value chain — design (engineers can model and specify a sheet more easily than a powder), procurement (a defined product with a datasheet, tolerances and repeatable supply), manufacturing (cut, laminate, stack or wrap without redesigning the process around a fragile raw material), and qualification (test a finished composite as a component in its real environment). The customer is not paying for “aerogel content” — they are paying for solved thermal, mechanical and integration constraints.
Where aerogel composites outperform conventional insulation
Aerogel composites are not universal replacements. Mineral wool, glass wool, foams, microporous insulation, ceramic fiber and calcium silicate remain widely used and often cost-effective. Aerogel composites become especially interesting when at least one constraint is severe: limited thickness, weight reduction, high thermal resistance in compact space, irregular geometry, extreme hot or cold environments, fire exposure, battery safety, aerospace qualification, thermal isolation in compact devices, retrofit constraints, or cryogenic service.
In other words: aerogel is rarely the cheapest way to insulate a wall or a pipe. It is often the smarter way to solve a thermal problem when space, mass or performance requirements make standard materials insufficient. That is the correct industrial lens — not a magic material, not commodity insulation, but high-performance thermal engineering.
Need aerogel performance in a ready-to-use thermal barrier?
Explore Skogar® silica aerogel composite sheets designed for demanding battery, aerospace, defense and electronics applications.