As early as 1931, Steven.S. Kistler began to study aerogels. His original method was to use acidic concentration of sodium silicate aqueous solution, redissolve silica with supercritical water, exchange water in pores with ethanol, and use supercritical fluid drying technology to make the original gas gel. This material is characterized by transparency, low density, and high porosity. However, due to the limitation of scientific research methods at that time, the development of this material did not attract the attention of the scientific community.
  In the 1970s, with the support of the French government, Stanislaus Teichner found a new synthetic method in the process of searching for a porous material for storing oxygen and rocket fuel, using the sol-gel chemical method In the preparation of silica aerogels. This method has promoted the development of aerogel science.
  Since then, aerogel science and technology have developed rapidly. In 1983, ArlonHunt discovered at Berkeley's laboratory that a safer and cheaper method of making silica aerogels could be used. At the same time, the research team of microstructured materials found that carbon dioxide supercritical fluid with lower critical temperature and critical pressure could be used instead of ethanol as the fluid for supercritical drying, allowing supercritical drying technology to move towards the practical stage.
In the late 1980s, researchers prepared the world's lightest silica aerogel at LLNL, with a density of 0.003 g / cm3, which is only three times that of air. Soon after, Rick Pekala (LLNL) prepared organic aerogels, including resorcinol-formaldehyde aerogels and melamine-formaldehyde aerogels. Resorcinol-formaldehyde aerogel can be pyrolyzed to obtain a pure carbon aerogel. This method opens up a new field of aerogel research.
After entering the 1990s, research in the field of aerogels has become more in-depth. According to incomplete statistics, there have been more than 3,000 articles about aerogels in various magazines in recent years. Science magazine in the United States listed aerogels as one of the ten hot sciences.