Silica Aerogel

Mesoporous solid material with 99.8% air volume.

Core Principles & Analysis

• Samuel Kistler invented it in 1931, using supercritical drying to swap a gel's liquid for gas without collapse — reportedly to win a bet.
• With thermal conductivity near 0.015 W/m·K, it is among the best solid insulators known and long held Guinness records as the lightest solid.
• NASA's Stardust probe used graded-density aerogel tiles to capture comet Wild 2 dust intact at about 6 km/s, returning samples to Earth in 2006.

Specifications & Metrics

• DENSITY: 0.003 g/cm³
• YIELD STRENGTH: 16 MPa (Comp)
• HARDNESS: N/A