Elastic and Compressive Barium Aluminosilicate Nanofibrous Sponge for Thermal Insulation up to 1400 °C

Traditional ceramic materials are prone to crushing due to structural collapse at high temperatures. Current efforts are focused on developing flexible and elastic ceramic materials with high thermal stability to address practical needs in the field of high-temperature thermal insulation, but this remains a significant challenge. In this work, elastic and compressible barium aluminosilicate (BAS) nanofibrous sponges are fabricated through gelation electrospinning and calcination processes. The resulting BAS nanofibrous sponges demonstrate excellent elasticity and compressibility across a temperature range of −196 to 1400 °C and can withstand 1000 compression cycles without structural collapse. Furthermore, they exhibit low thermal conductivity (0.0239 W m–1 K–1), low bulk density (4.42 mg cm–3), and high working temperature. In this sense, our study highlights the great potential of BAS nanofibrous sponges as thermal protective materials in extreme operating environments.