Nanoflake-Engineered Zirconic Fibrous Aerogels with Parallel-Arrayed Conduits for Fast Nerve Agent Degradation.

Chemical warfare agents (CWAs) pose huge threats to ecological environments, agriculture, and human health due to the turbulent international situation in contemporary society. Zirconium hydroxide (Zr(OH)4) has captured the prime focus as an effective candidate for CWA decomposition but is often hindered by the isolated powder form. Here, we demonstrate a scalable three-dimensional space-confined synthetic strategy to fabricate nanoflake-engineered zirconic fibrous aerogels (NZFAs). Our strategy enables the stereoscopic Zr(OH)4 nanoflakes vertically and evenly in situ grown on the interconnected fibrous framework, remarkably enlarging the surface area and providing rich active sites for CWA catalysis. The as-synthesized NZFAs exhibit intriguing properties of ultralow density (>0.37 mg cm-3), shape-memory behavior under 90% strain, and robust fatigue resistance over 106 compression cycles at 40% strain. Meanwhile, the high air permeability, prominent adsorptivity, and reusability make them state-of-the-art chemical protective materials. This work may provide an avenue for developing next-generation aerogel-based catalysts and beyond.

Direct Synthesis of Polyimide Curly Nanofibrous Aerogels for High-Performance Thermal Insulation Under Extreme Temperature.

Maintaining human body temperature is one of the basic needs for living, which requires high-performance thermal insulation materials to prevent heat exchange with external environment. However, the most widely used fibrous thermal insulation materials always suffer from the heavy weight, weak mechanical property, and moderate capacity to suppress heat transfer, resulting in limited personal cold and thermal protection performance. Here, an ultralight, mechanically robust, and thermally insulating polyimide (PI) aerogel is directly synthesized via constructing 3D interlocked curly nanofibrous networks during electrospinning. Controlling the solution/water molecule interaction enables the rapid phase inversion of charged jets, while the multiple jets are ejected by regulating charge density of the fluids, thus synergistically allowing numerous curly nanofibers to interlock and cross-link with each other to form porous aerogel structure. The resulted PI aerogel integrates the ultralight property with density of 2.4 mg cm-3, extreme temperature tolerance (mechanical robustness over -196 to 300 °C), and thermal insulation performance with ultralow thermal conductivity of 22.4 mW m-1 K-1, providing an ideal candidate to keep human thermal comfort under extreme temperature. This work can provide a source of inspiration for the design and development of nanofibrous aerogels for various applications.