A study of the hydrosilylation approach to a one-pot synthesis of silicone aerogels in supercritical CO2

Abstract The hydrosilylation approach to silicone aerogels synthesis in supercritical CO 2 was thoroughly investigated in this work. Commercially available functionalized PDMS was used as a hydride-containing component that was cross-linked using a set of PDMS-based divinyls with various lengths. It was demonstrated that when the density of the CO 2 is close to that of the reagents, monolithic aerogels are formed. Varying the CO 2 density and the length of a divinyl component, one can obtain flexible hydrophobic aerogels with densities as low as 0.13 g/cm 3 or fine porous microgranules of about 0.5 mm diameter.