What is polyimide aerogel?

1. Introduction to polyimide aerogel

‌Polyimide aerogel‌ is a high-performance material that combines the excellent properties of polyimide with the unique structure of aerogel. Polyimide (PI) itself is a polymer material with good mechanical properties, chemical resistance, dielectric properties and high temperature stability, and is widely used in many fields of high-end manufacturing. Aerogel is a nano-scale porous solid material, known for its extremely low density and excellent thermal insulation performance. When polyimide is combined with aerogel technology, the polyimide aerogel formed not only inherits the advantages of polyimide, but also has lower density and better thermal insulation performance due to its porous structure. This material has broad application prospects in aerospace, microelectronics, liquid crystal, separation membranes and other fields.

In order to realize the manned Mars landing plan, the NASA Research Center applied polyimide aerogel materials to the research of supersonic inflatable pneumatic reducer (HIAD) when developing heavy-load transportation technology, which provided a solution for studying the payload and volume efficiency of spacecraft braking. In addition, due to the durability of polyimide aerogel materials, it also has broad application prospects in propellant tanks, ultra-light multifunctional materials for rover and space residences.

In addition to the aerospace field, polyimide aerogel materials have good application prospects in electronic communications, thermal insulation and flame retardant materials, adsorption cleaning, sound insulation and sound absorption, catalytic carriers, wire/cable insulation layers and other fields.