Solvent-regulable interfacial groups enable on-demand superhydrophobic/superhydrophilic silica aerogels

Lixiao Chen, Lishan Li and Xuetong Zhang ()
Additional contact information
Lixiao Chen: University of Science and Technology of China
Lishan Li: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xuetong Zhang: Chinese Academy of Sciences

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Silica aerogel, as the earliest synthetic and commercially available one among all known aerogels, holds significant value in fields including thermal and acoustic insulation, optics, catalysis, sorption, etc. However, throughout its nearly century-long history, the influence of solvent used during synthesis on the properties of silica aerogels has been neglected, resulting in inaccurate and ambiguous performance evaluation. Herein, we have uncovered and systematically investigated the solvent-regulable interfacial groups that enable on-demand superhydrophobicity/superhydrophilicity of silica aerogels. During either sol-gel transition or solvent exchange process both required for aerogel synthesis, the alteration of solvent either from water to ethanol or vice versa leads to silica interfacial groups switch from superhydrophilic Si-OH to superhydrophobic Si-OEt or reversely due to reversible esterification, thus enabling on-demand superhydrophobic/superhydrophilic silica aerogels. It is worth noting that on-demand solvent-regulated hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity holds true regardless of used silica precursors (the mixture of trimethoxymethylsilane (MTMS)/tetramethoxysilane (TMOS), MTMS/tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS), or sodium methicosilicate (SMS)/TMOS), thereby indicating its universality, which wakes up considerable attention for producers involved in silica aerogels. Additionally, the discovery also provides a green, economical, and efficient way to achieve silica aerogels with on-demand hydrophilic/hydrophobic performance for specific sorption, etc.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-57246-2 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-57246-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-57246-2

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().