Discussions

Environmental clean-up
Carbon aerogels show wonderful adsorption and catalytic properties because of the microscopic properties of carbon nanomaterials and the macroscopic structure of the gel. Therefore, they are widely used in environmental clean-up for removing pollutants like oils, toxic organic solvents, dyes, heavy metal ions in aquatic environments, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), carbon oxides (CO2, CO), nitrogen oxide (NOx), and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) in the atmosphere.

Thermal insulation
The importance of thermal insulation has grown with increasing building energy efficiency considerations and attention in the aerospace field. Carbon aerogels with small pore sizes (<100 nm) typically exhibit low thermal conductivity due to the Knudsen effect[3]. This feature makes them suitable as thermal insulation materials.

Others
The number of publications concerning carbon aerogels has been increasing in the past decade. In addition to environmental clean-up and thermal insulation, carbon aerogels are also widely used in energy storage, chemical sensors, biomedicine, etc.