A novel method to synthesize high-strength elastic gel and carbonized aerogel

Carbon aerogels have expanded the trend of the catalytic, adsorption, super capacitor field, and so on. Unfortunately, the real-world applications of porous carbon materials are limited because of the high cost, complicated preparation process and poor mechanical properties. Herein, we report an extremely simple and novel method to prepare carbon aerogels. Based on the principles of two-step curing including acid curing and heat curing, we develop a elastic Phenol-formaldehyde resin gel (PFRG) with high strength (18.9 MPa) from Phenol-formaldehyde resin (PFR) by controlling the loss of solvent in the process. Due to the robust network of RFRG, the Phenol-formaldehyde resin carbon aerogels (PFRCAs) can be directly procured through a tube furnace. The obtained PFRCAs possess macroporous/microporous hierarchical structure with high mechanical strength of 11.2 MPa and low thermal conductivity (0.0381 Wm/K). These results show that the proposed method can be promoted as a universal and promising method for preparing aerogel with thermosetting resin, which has driven a wider industrial utilization of aerogel and thermosetting resin.