Aerogels as bulk nanocellular materials for electronic applications

Reference	Presenter	Authors (Institution)	Abstract
17-031	Carlos Renato Rambo	Rambo, C.R.(Federal University of Santa Catarina); Muller, D.(Federal University of Santa Catarina); Cezario, I.C.(Federal University of Santa Catarina); Pinheiro, G.K.(Federal University of Santa Catarina); Bernardes, J.C.(Federal University of Santa Catarina); Scarabelot, L.T.(Federal University of Santa Catarina); Serpa, R.B.(Federal University of Santa Catarina);	Aerogels are complex nanostructured materials with an extremely porous structure, low density and high specific surface area, which makes them a good choice for a variety of applications such as absorbent material and matrix for nanocomposites. Usually aerogels are produced by sol-gel technique, where the gels are submitted to a supercritical CO2 drying process. Aerogels can be also morphologically defined as solid nanoparticles forming a three-dimensional network surrounding nanosized pores that comprise nanocells. Therefore, aerogels can also be interpreted as nanocellular solids, where the sizes of both pore network and solid particles have the same magnitude. As nanocellular materials, aerogels exhibit cellular-dependent features like open and interconnected pore structure. Despite their inherent properties, their high surface area and their continuous solid network provide pathways for electrical carriers and anchorage for catalysts, polymers, grapheme and other nanoparticles depending on the surface’s chemical nature. In this work some applications of oxide aerogels will be explored regarding their above mentioned cellular-dependent characteristics. As key examples for applications in electronics, results related to supercapacitors and solar cells will be presented. As a first case, Ni(OH)2 aerogels incorporated with polypyrrole were produced and applied as electrodes for high capacity energy storage devices. As another, TiO2 aerogels were applied as electron-transport layers in CH3NH3PbI3-based solar cells, where the TiO2 aerogel increased the contact surface, enabling the deposition of a higher concentration of perovskite and promoted an increase in the incident photon to current efficiency (IPCE). Based on the exposed, one can conclude that the inherent features of aerogels can be used in applications that demand nanocellular structures and as hosts for synthesis of nanocomposites.
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