On the bus back from the Cleantech conference in Stockholm last night I spoke to an investor working with AirGlass, a type of glass that is 97% air. This is actually a sort of aerogel and weighs a mere 50Kg/m³. It would be used as a form of transparent wall and has amazing insulating potential. The product has been floating around (ha!) for a while but this is the first time I’ve seen it up close.
The stuff is still too brittle to work with alone – the investor was looking into creating a thin plastic cover to protect it – but the glass could replace standard glass as it’s transparent and can hold a colored dye.
At around 750°C (1380°F), it starts to shrink and slowly collapses to a piece of ordinary quartz.
Airglass can be cut with a band saw and holes can be drilled with a metal drill. It should be noted that Airglass is non-flammable and non-toxic.
Apparently before you mold it the glass can flow like water so you could make it into any shape. It was amazingly light and it felt solid although it had some sharp edges.
Where can I get some?!? Honestly I can think of like two million uses for that little piece of awesome.
That is really cool… has some great potential in a number of fields!
Jon
http://WoodMarvels.com – Create Unique Memories
Looks cool but doubt it can go mainstream.. Maybe one day though. Gotta keep hope alive:)
Mike
http://www.wannadevelop.com
Fantastic looking results. That’ll be a patent to have and hold.
S: Aye Captain…but if we could make the tanks for the whales out of transparent Aluminum…
K: But Scottie…that doesn’t exist yet.
S: How do we know he’s not the one that invented it?
Apple, please make a MacBook AirGlass!
my comments at http://www.commentino.com/orim
It may be that the patent on this stuff has expired already. Aerogel has been around since the 70’s. It’s extremely brittle, but this fellow is saying they’re working on that. I’d expect they’d have to laminate it with a film to be of practicality in structural situations. cool stuff though…
@Mikea: you can buy chunks of this stuff at various places on the internet. Not exactly cheap however, but you can buy smaller sized fragments like the one above for probably $20-30.
Has anyone independently researched the dust particles produced when you cut AirGlass with a band saw or metal drill as suggested?
The AirGlass home page says the “Grain size [is] 10 – 30 nm in diameter”, which could be an indication of dust size. http://www.airglass.se/info.html
This is not so different to Asbestos fibers of e.g “30 – 80 nm [and] Nano particles that are just a few nm in size can present a health hazard”
http://www.soft-imaging.net/en/5085_5227.htm
How expensive is this stuff?
Wow it must have loads of potential! I mean look how much money they’ve invested into that website! A whole 2, possibly 3 dollars?
LOL. I’m with you on this. Aerogel has been around for 30 years.
oaw!!!!
great invention!
The largest health risk so far from cut aerogels is mechanical irritation to the eyes or as an inhaled dust. The particle size and brittleness puts it out of range for asbestos-like effects.
Aspen Aerogels (http://www.aerogel.com/) is backed by RockPort Capital among others.
This material has been around for decades and is a favorite playground for solid state physicists and chemists due to its exceptionally high surface area to volume ratio.
Maybe this stuff was so hard to invent they didn’t have anytime left to work on their site! Come on cut ‘em a break LOL ;).
I hope aerogel and this airglass product can muster-up the momentum to spread into mainstream production. As another poster noted, knowing the price would help a lot:)
Also, I’d like to know how much embodied energy this product contains, which would be helpful info in determining how it can be implemented into sustainable architecture.
Forget Aerogel, I want Pyrogel.
“You… realize that by giving him the formula, we’re altering the future.”
“Why? How do we know he didn’t invent the thing?”