Silica-Based Aerogels with Tunable Properties: The Highly Efficient BF₃-Catalyzed Preparation and Look inside Their Structure

This work presents a solution to one of the most fundamentally and practically important challenges in the production of silica-based aerogels, time consumption and expensiveness of these processes, with the main focus on the sol–gel process. We suggested a highly efficient BF3-catalyzed method for the production of aerogels, which allows one to shorten the stage of the formation of a (wet) gel to 5 min, the stage of gel aging to 0, while the stage of gel workup is not required; the duration of these stages, according to the literature, ranges from days to weeks. The process is performed using commercially available, simple, and inexpensive reagents and under mild reaction conditions: BF3·Et2O as the catalyst, acetone as the solvent, room temperature, and at atmospheric pressure. This approach allows one to quickly obtain both classic opaque and transparent silica-based aerogels from Si(OMe)4 or Si(OEt)4 as well as transparent superhydrophobic ones from their mixtures with MeSi(OMe)3 or Me2Si(OMe)2. In addition, we succeeded in obtaining a series of aerogels with various organic and inorganic additives, in particular, in this way, luminescent and metallasiloxane ones were prepared. Also, the effect of the method for producing silica-based aerogels on their (supra)molecular structure and morphology was thoroughly studied by a set of physicochemical methods of analysis: scanning electron and light microscopy, X-ray microtomography, and NMR experiments. These findings allow to tune the density, transparency, mechanical strength, hydrophobicity, and other properties depending on the need by choosing the right technique.