"You can buy a two - or three-bedroom house, insulate it with aerogel, and then heat the house with candles. But eventually the house gets too hot." This sentence is a foreign doctor's description of aerogel. Invented by Samuel S. Kistler in the 1930s, aerogel or "blue smoke" is the least dense solid known to man and is an insulator that is four times more efficient than fiberglass and foam. It is made up of 90% air. Due to its translucent nature, it is referred to as "frozen smoke", "blue smoke", and "solid smoke".

Aerogel is formed by removing all the liquid from the gel until it is filled with air, hence the name: aerogel. Aerogel follows a process called "supercritical dyeing", in which the liquid within the gel enters the supercritical stage, allowing the transition from liquid to gas without contracting. The process usually takes a few days to complete, and with the continuous development of scientific research technology, scientists have compressed the drying time to a few hours.

Aerogel and its products are relatively expensive. Aerogel and its products have been used in the aerospace field until the beginning of commercialization, such as the use of aerogel as a capture medium by NASA. It collects very small interstellar and cometary particles, which are embedded in the porous aerogel. Aerogels are also used as thermal and acoustic insulation, catalytic carriers, optical components and filters.

Here are a few reasons why aerogel is expensive:

1, high production cost: the manufacturing process of aerogel is more complex, requiring the use of special chemical raw materials and production equipment. In addition, the manufacturing process of aerogel also needs to control very strict temperature and humidity conditions to ensure product quality. All these lead to the high production cost of aerogel.

2, small market demand: Because aerogel is a relatively new material, the current market demand is relatively small, and in some applications have not completely replaced traditional insulation materials. This also makes the production scale of aerogel relatively small, difficult to achieve large-scale production and reduce costs.

3, high technical content: The manufacturing process of aerogel involves many high-tech fields, such as nanotechnology, chemical engineering, etc., which requires certain professional knowledge and skills. This also leads to the high technical content of aerogel production, and the cost naturally increases.

Although the price of aerogel and its products is higher, it has better adiabatic insulation properties and lighter weight, and can play a better role in some applications. With the continuous development of technology and the gradual expansion of production scale, it is expected that the price of aerogel and its products will gradually decline.