General Preparation and Shaping of Multifunctional Nanowire Aerogels for Pressure/Gas/Photo-Sensing

Nanowires (NWs) with ultrahigh aspect ratio are good one-dimensional (1D) nano scaffolds for building functional aerogels. However, challenges still remain in exploring methods to prepare shape designable NW aerogels with high quality, and to reveal multi functions in a single NW aerogel monolith. Here, we report a general camphene freeze-drying method for preparation of various inorganic NW aerogels (e.g, Cu, hydroxylapatite, MnO2 and MnOOH NW aerogels), 2D graphene oxide nanosheet aerogels, organic polymer aerogels of polystyrene (post-synthesis) and resin (in situ polymerization) aerogels, which can be freely shaped in the frozen monolith stage. The as prepared aerogels have even distributed porosity and smooth surface. Also camphene is cheap and can be effectively recycling collected for reuse. For the Cu NW aerogel with even porosity and low density of 20 mg cm−3, multifunctional pressure/gas/photo-sensing was demonstrated. A high pressure sensitivity of 1.7 kPa−1 was achieved.