Highly Efficient Thermo-Acoustic Insulating Aerogels Enabled by Resonant Cavity Engineering.

ABSTRACT

Lightweight, flexible, and noncombustible thermo-acoustic insulating (TAI) materials have great potential in vehicles, cold-chain transportation, and aerospace engineering, where weight and space savings are critical. However, the TAI capabilities of many commodities are hindered by the lack of diverse and reasonable resonant cavities with broadband and highly efficient acoustic responsiveness. This study demonstrates a layer-by-layer freeze-casting method for superelastic cellular aerogel construction from varied nanofibers and ice particulates with widely distributed resonant cavities from 0.5 to 300 µm. The method enabled the cumulative freezing of the nanofiber solution from one side to the other side, resulting in vertical pore channels with random holes across the entire freezing distance. The formed cellular networks of stable hinged ternary nanofiber membranes, functionalized as ultrathin nanofiber drums, exhibit strong resonances and efficiently dissipate sound waves in a broad frequency range. A high noise reduction coefficient of 0.65 at a frequency range of 63-6300 Hz and a low thermal conductivity of 0.026 W m-1 K-1 at room temperature was obtained. This work presents the bottom-up fabrication of high-performance TAI aerogels that are beneficial for practical energy-saving devices and buildings and broadband acoustic absorption applications.