A review of research progress on carbon aerogel

LIU Shouxin;E Lei;LI Wei;MA Chunhui;College of Material Science and Engineering,Northeast Forestry University;

carbon aerogel;;carbon materials;;phenolic resin;;biomass

Carbon aerogels are synthetic porous materials derived from sol-gel carbon materials,in which the liquid component is replaced with gas from the complete structure of solid nanometer without pore collapse.As a kind of novel nanoscale carbonaceous material,the carbon aerogel has attracted extensive interest from both academic and industries due to its specific properties,such as low density,high specific surface area,large pore volume,good thermal stability and high electrical conductivity.Accordingly,carbon aerogels are promising materials in various fields,for instance,adsorbents,catalyst supports and supercapacitors.On the other hand,the unique cross-linked structure with abundant open pores,makes carbon aerogels attractive candidates for the application in the separation of oil and water.Resorcinol-formaldehyde is the main precursor to fabricate organic carbon aerogels via sol-gel,solvent exchange,drying and carbonization.However,the preparation of resorcinol-formaldehyde carbon aerogel requires large volumes of chemicals,thus hampering their large-scale production for industry application.At present,there is a growing trend in producing carbon aerogels from biomass raw materials,and biomass precursors have been successfully prepared for carbon aerogels due to the development of the sol-gel technology.Therefore,the preparation of carbon aerogel was summarized in this paper.Meanwhile,properties and application of carbon aerogel was described.In addition,aperspective on the carbon aerogel materials and the research area in the future was discussed.