The nanofiber research team led by Academician Yu Jianyong and Researcher Ding Bin of the Textile Technology Innovation Center of Donghua University has made important progress in the field of superelastic inorganic nanofiber aerogels. Relevant research results were published in the famous journal "Angewandte Chemie International Edition" in the field of chemistry with the title of "In situ Synthesis of Biomimetic Silica Nanofibrous Aerogels with Temperature-Invariant Superelasticity over One Million Compressions", article DOI: 10.1002 / anie.202001679.
In recent years, ceramic aerogels have broad application prospects in the fields of high temperature insulation, energy storage, and environmental protection due to their advantages of low density, low thermal conductivity, corrosion resistance, and good chemical stability. However, the traditional ceramic materials generally have problems such as high brittleness, high hardness, and incompressibility, which severely limit their practical applications. In response to the above problems, the research team used silicon oxide nanofibers as the building blocks, and built a "rubber-like" elastic bonding network between the fibers in situ through the fiber freezing molding method, and then prepared a frame structure with imitated wick fiber Super elastic silicon oxide nanofiber aerogel.