Production and Rare Earth Doping of Aerogels

We present recent studies into several methods for making Aerogels. We used both critical point drying methods and chemical dehydroxylation to achieve low density glasses. We used an SEM to characterize the increased pore sizes in these glass materials. In addition, we will present preliminary results of our efforts to add rare earth ions to the glass structure. We are attempting to add the rare earth ions to the glass while avoiding the clustering problems normally encountered in the sol-gel synthesis technique.