Silica based nanoporous composite materials

Various porous materials are widely used as thermal insulation for many engineering problems (Bynum, 2001). The majority of these materials are made of substances characterized by low thermal conductivity. Thus, the resulting thermal conductivity of the insulation decreases. However, the low-conductivity substances are usually semitransparent in the visible and near-infrared spectral ranges. The latter makes it especially important to correctly account for the thermal radiation mode of heat transfer in the porous material, with specific attention to spectral radiative characteristics in the near-infrared. One can formulate the following typical features of scattering ...