Nanofiber aerogels

In the project “Nanofiber Aerogels – from a Fundamental Understanding of Structure towards Transparent Flexible Insulation and Functional Hybrids” we investigated the structure-property relationships in cellulose and protein nanofiber gels and aerogels.

The fundamental results of this project helped in advancing our understanding of the classification of nanocellulose gel networks and showed how single nanofibril parameters such as average contour and segment length can be directly linked to elastic properties of the corresponding gel network.

With this fundamental knowledge as a basis a number of functional hybrid aerogels were prepared including cellulose-titanium dioxide porous membranes, prepared by electrostatic assembly ,for flow through photo catalysis and amyloid fibril templated calcium carbonate and silver nanoparticle hybrid systems.

This work was supported by an SNSF Ambizione Fellowship (PZOOP2_168023/1) and the results were reported in numerous scientific publications including Angewandte Chemie, Advanced Functional Materials, Current Opinion in Colloid & Interface Science and Nanoscale.