Aerogels have many attractive properties but are usually costly and mechanically brittle, which always limit their practical applications. While many efforts have been made to reinforce the aerogels, most of the reinforcement efforts sacrifice the transparency or superinsulating properties. Here we report superflexible polyvinylpolymethylsiloxane, (CH₂CH(Si(CH₃)O_2/2))_n, aerogels that are facilely prepared from a single precursor vinylmethyldimethoxysilane or vinylmethyldiethoxysilane without organic cross-linkers. The method is based on consecutive processes involving radical polymerization and hydrolytic polycondensation, followed by ultralow-cost, highly scalable, ambient-pressure drying directly from alcohol as a drying medium without any modification or additional solvent exchange. The resulting aerogels and xerogels show a homogeneous, tunable, highly porous, doubly cross-linked nanostructure with the elastic polymethylsiloxane network cross-linked with flexible hydrocarbon chains. An outstanding combination of ultralow cost, high scalability, uniform pore size, high surface area, high transparency, high hydrophobicity, excellent machinability, superflexibility in compression, superflexibility in bending, and superinsulating properties has been achieved in a single aerogel or xerogel. This study represents a significant progress of porous materials and makes the practical applications of transparent flexible aerogel-based superinsulators realistic.

中文翻译：

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通过常压干燥的透明，超柔韧性双交联聚乙烯基聚甲基硅氧烷气凝胶超级绝缘剂

气凝胶具有许多吸引人的性能，但通常价格昂贵且机械易碎，这始终限制了其实际应用。尽管已经进行了许多努力来增强气凝胶，但是大多数的增强工作都牺牲了透明性或超绝热性能。在这里，我们报告了超柔韧性聚乙烯基聚甲基硅氧烷，（CH ₂ CH（Si（CH ₃）O _2/2））_n，是由单一的前体乙烯基甲基二甲氧基硅烷或乙烯基甲基二乙氧基硅烷而没有有机交联剂轻松制备的气凝胶。该方法基于连续的过程，包括自由基聚合和水解缩聚，然后直接从乙醇作为干燥介质进行超低成本，高可扩展性，常压干燥，而无需进行任何改性或额外的溶剂交换。所得的气凝胶和干凝胶显示出均匀的，可调谐的，高度多孔的，双重交联的纳米结构，其中弹性聚甲基硅氧烷网络与柔性烃链交联。超低成本，高可扩展性，均匀孔径，高表面积，高透明度，高疏水性，出色的可加工性，压缩超柔性，弯曲超柔性的出色组合，并且在单个气凝胶或干凝胶中已经实现了超绝热性能。这项研究代表了多孔材料的重大进展，并使透明的基于气凝胶的透明超级绝热剂的实际应用成为现实。