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From hard to rubber-like: mechanical properties of resorcinol–formaldehyde aerogels

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Abstract

Four types of resorcinol–formaldehyde (RF) aerogels, stiff, brittle, low-flexible, and super-flexible are studied in this work. Despite several studies on mechanical properties on RF aerogels their response when exposed to compressive loading and their fracture behavior are not well investigated. Here, we cover aerogels with a very broad density range of 0.08–0.3 g cm−3 and compressive moduli from 0.12 to 28 MPa. We relate the microstructure of the synthesized aerogels and their behavior under uniaxial compression. Additionally, this work is the first, to our knowledge, to implement the usage of digital image correlation for characterizing the deformation of RF aerogels. The comparison of surface strain distribution of four types of aerogels provides an insight to their reaction on compressive loading.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Mr Michael Adamek (MPIE, Duesseldorf) for great support with experiments.

Compliance with ethical standards

The manuscript “From hard to rubber-like: mechanical properties of resorcinol–formaldehyde aerogels” has not been submitted to other journal for simultaneous consideration. The manuscript has not been published previously. No data have been fabricated or manipulated (including images) to support our conclusions. Consent to submit has been received explicitly from all co-authors before the work is submitted. Authors whose names appear on the submission have contributed sufficiently to the scientific work and therefore share collective responsibility and accountability for the results.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. The corresponding author collected the conflict of interest disclosure forms from all authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Materials Research, German Aerospace Center, Linder Hoehe, 51170, Cologne, Germany

    Marina Schwan & Lorenz Ratke

  2. Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung GmbH, Max-Planck-Str. 1, 40237, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Manoj Naikade & Dierk Raabe

Authors
  1. Marina Schwan
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  2. Manoj Naikade
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  3. Dierk Raabe
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  4. Lorenz Ratke
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Correspondence to Marina Schwan.

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Schwan, M., Naikade, M., Raabe, D. et al. From hard to rubber-like: mechanical properties of resorcinol–formaldehyde aerogels. J Mater Sci 50, 5482–5493 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-015-9094-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-015-9094-x

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