July 2025 - aerogel-it

If you are interested in aerogels, their applications, challenges and opportunities do check out a new technology briefing on aerogels by Springwise! It gives a great overview of the state of things.

You can find the briefing at Springwise here.

The article includes testimonials from fellow aerogel experts:
Fabian Eisenreich of Eindhoven University of Technology
Ernesto Scoppola of Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces
Sam Cryer of Thermulon

The Springwise team also interviewed Marc. He shared our aerogel-it vision of the aerogel world:

👉 With new exciting material and process technology, we can bring aerogel cost down. In the market, cost is a big obstacle for current aerogel materials. aerogel-it is developing next-generation aerogel materials to address this challenge.

👉 Also, with these new technologies aerogels become much more sustainable and easier to integrate and recycle.

👉 Bio-based aerogels such as our cellulose bioaerogel enable new applications and markets that were not possible with classical silica aerogel materials.

Biomineral silica aerogel LSMA-GH — Our next-generation biomineral silica aerogel particles

Last week Marc and Dirk of the aerogel-it team had the pleasure to visit leading Chinese aerogel and thermal barrier manufacturer IBIH Advanced Materials. IBIH celebrated their their 10th anniversary and hosted the official opening of a brand-new joint international aerogel R&D center.

Also present were Hamburg University of Technology president Prof. Dr. Andreas Timm-Giel and vice-president Prof. Dr. Irina Smirnova. Both were visiting China to build new collaborations. They were joined by fellow aerogel compatriots Keey Aerogel with Francisco RUIZ, new CEO Stéphane Reyniers and his predecessor Michael O’Connor.

The IBIH story

Starting from zero, the IBIH team around CEO Dr. Yunhong Wang has established itself as the leading provider of aerogel thermal barriers for EV batteries. Through hard work and grit, they have become market leader in China. Founder and chairman Mr. Tian emotionally spoke about how hard the journey had been – which resonated with the aerogel-it and Keey Aerogel teams.

In addition to the very touching anniversary celebration, the colleagues of IBIH very kindly and proudly gave their guests tours of their various R&D and production facilities. A pleasure for the assembled aerogel experts who were impressed by the capabilities. Furthermore, aerogel-it and IBIH identified potential collaborations. And in addition to the many business-related events, the IBIH organizing team around Haibing Dong, Yitian Du杜倚天 and Meng Xiao hosted the visitors for an amazing week in Beijing and surroundings!

Thermal barriers and aerogels

Thermal barriers are – as of now – necessary to contain possible thermal runaway from EV battery cells. In this way, they prevent chain reactions across the battery and help to protect passengers of electrical vehicles. Aerogel has been found to provide an excellent solution for two reasons:

1️⃣ Due to its excellent thermal insulation performance, the material shields against thermal runaway even if very thin which saves space and increases vehicle range.

2️⃣ The aerogel structure can deal with battery cell “breathing” and expansion over the battery lifetime.

There was some hope for solid-state batteries to get rid of the runaway problem and with it the thermal barriers. But the involved high energy densities still bear risk. Therefore, aerogels may be here to stay.

Heat shields have already become the largest aerogel application. The aerogel market is now heavily contested between older players such as Aspen Aerogels and Cabot and younger players, especially in Asia and China. Interestingly, there is currently no aerogel production in Europe (something that aerogel-it and Keey are driving to change with our step-change and cost-saving technologies).

Already around 5 million electrical cars drive with 200 million aerogel thermal barriers produced by IBIH. Now they are expanding globally and hired a stellar set of people to do it. Quite a success story that we can only congratulate them on!