Companiesandmarkets.com is offering a new 70-page report that analyzes the global market for aerogels by following end-use markets: thermal and acoustic insulation, consumer products, sensors and Instrumentation, medical, aerospace, energy and others. The report contains separate analyses for US, Europe and the rest of world, with forecasts through 2015.

The report profiles 11 companies including many key and niche players worldwide such as American Aerogel, Aspen Aerogels, Cabot, Marketech International and TAASI. The publisher says the market data and analytics are derived from primary and secondary research, noting that the company profiles are mostly extracted from online sources.

Material wise, the report covers silica and carbon aerogels plus cryogels and xerogels. It also covers technological developments including aerogel integration with fibers and yarns. On the business side, the report delves into recent product innovations and industry activities.

The report costs $4,500 but a view of the table of contents is provided for free.

Read more about aerogel:

Video: Aerogel insulation hits housing market

Aerogel-based -40°C hydration system to be licensed

Solar Decathlon entries make use of aerogel

Aeroclay research at Case Western

NASA’s aerogel grid captures amino acid in space

Cabot”s Nanogel aerogel insulation selected for 50 km of subsea pipelines

Artistic aerogel light demonstrations

Aerogel used in classic car remake

Aerogel’s potential to mop up oil spills

Aerogel has potential as tunable waveplate

Universe’s largest catcher’s mitt?

Birdair demonstrates aerogel membrane roofing systems

Nanotube aerogel sheets - better than real muscle?

Introduction to aerogel video

The movie The Hurt Locker won big on Oscars night last weekend. The film about explosive ordinance disposal squad in Iraq scored five awards in total: Kathryn Bigelow won Best Director, and Mark Boal scored for Best Original Screenplay. It won Best Film Editing and Best Sound Editing. And finally, the film won Best Picture category.

The ceramic protective armor worn by members of the bomb squad was a major element in the film. Made of Kevlar fabric with ceramic plates, the suit is designed to protect the soldier from the impact of a blast. “We thought of it like a suit of armor that a knight would wear in medieval times,” says Boal in a Hurt Locker press release (PDF). “They have to put on, because it’s the only thing they have, but it certainly doesn’t offer foolproof protection from the enemy.”

“It’s heavy, it’s hot, it’s hard to move in, but it put me right in the moment. Just the idea of getting into it—I wanted to dry heave whenever they said it was time to get suited up. I started sweating instantly and I knew I wasn’t going to get any hotter than I was in the first 30 seconds,” recalls Jeremy Renner, actor.

Guy Pearce, the actor who plays the squad’s first leader, remarks that, “Our suit weighed about 70 pounds and I think the ones they actually wear are about 140 pounds.”

If you haven’t seen the movie, you can see one of these suits (an EOD 9 suit) in this Navy video:

This isn’t the first time a critically acclaimed movie has featured the wonders of ceramic armor. We’ve written about Batman’s ceramic armor suit used in The Dark Knight that was manufactured by Ceradyne.

Learn more about ceramic military applications in the military here.

Until recently, Sage Electromatics made electrically tintable windows on a relatively small scale. All that’s about to change. On Friday, the DOE announced that it would provide Sage with a $72 million loan guarantee to build a 250,000 sq. ft. plant in Faribault, Minn.

The company’s SageGlass windows can turn from clear to opaque and back with a click of the switch. (Okay, not literally that quick, but more like in 3-5 minutes after a small amount of voltage is supplied or cut off.) Sage says its product is the only commercially available, electronically tintable window glass in the world.

The loan nicely complements a $31 million Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit the company snagged from the DOE earlier this year.

Sage says its panes are coated with five layers of ceramic materials and use a low voltage:

“When voltage [less than 5V DC] is applied to these layers in their “clear” state, they darken as lithium ions and associated electrons transfer from the counter electrode to the electrochromic electrode layer.Reversing the voltage polarity causes the ions and associated electrons to return to their original layer.”

The company uses a vacuum-deposition sputtering process coating conventional float glass. A second piece of glass is added to complete the sandwich, which is surrounded by an aluminum frame. The units can transmit less than 4% of the visible light in their tinted state.

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, according to the DOE, says SageGlass could cut a building’s heating and air conditioning equipment size by up to 25% and reduce overall cooling loads for commercial buildings up to 20% (by lowering peak power demand) besides shrinking lighting cost. Use of SageGlass may provide LEED credits.

While the glass panels currently operate only in either clear or opaque modes, the company says it will sell an intermediate-level tint system later this year. Sage also says PV-powered units are under development - a good match because of the low-voltage requirements.

The units can be connected to either a simple wall switch or as units integrated into a building management control systems. They also come in four colors (interior appearance - the exterior of appearance of the four are the same): black, green, blue and gray. The largest size currently available is 40″ x 60″ (in either dimension, W x L, or L x W).

The company offers an interesting portfolio on its website of SageGlass installations.

Faribault is located about 25 miles south of St. Paul. The company says the new factory will create about 160 new jobs.

A group out of Missouri University of Science and Technology says it has a new method for mixing metals with ceramic that will allow stronger, heat-resistant, functionally graded materials for the creation of hypersonic and other ultrahigh-temperature aerospace components.

The group, led by Ming Lue, a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor at S&T, uses a precisely controlled extrusion approach to combine – in varying proportions – the ceramic and metallic base components together with a binder. For example, zirconium carbide is pushed through one tube, tungsten is pushed through a second tube and the binder from a third. The metal–ceramic combination is then extruded as a paste, but interesting thing is that the exact mix could be carefully altered as a function of time.

This could potentially revolutionize manufacturing of complex- near net-shaped ceramic parts (which can’t  be processed by conventional methods such as slip casting or injection molding).

In other words, a manufacturer could produce a component with a paste composition that can be varied as it is extruded.

The piece is made depositing the paste, layer-by-layer. The component is then put through what they call Rapid Freeze Prototyping and Freeze Casting to remove the water and polymer binder. The last step is a reaction sintering. The end result is a component composed of gradient materials with custom-tailored mechanical properties.

The biggest benefit, says Leu, who is associated with S&T’s Center for Aerospace Manufacturing Technologies, is the ease it would give manufacturers to create customized parts for aircraft or spacecraft. “By controlling the extrusion forces, we can customize the percentage composition of each of the materials in the final product,” says Leu, who worked on the project with Greg Hilmas, a professor of materials science and engineering  and Robert G. Landers, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.

Another benefit is that the process cuts the amount of polymer needed to bind the metal and ceramic.

“In order to create high-performance combustion components or high-performance hypersonic vehicles that can sustain extreme heat and minimize thermal stresses, these types of functionally graded materials will be needed,” says Leu.

ACerS recently conducted a wonderful “Materials Challenges in Alternative & Renewable Energy 2010″ conference Feb. 21-24  in Cocoa Beach, Fla. Co-organizers Jack G. Simon and George G. Wicks, along with their advisory and technical planning committee, put together an outstanding technical program that included 160 presentations and posters, and 227 people from around the globe attended.

The first day of the conference opened with several 40-minute “tutorial” sessions led by some of the top people in the field. We will have videos available of some of the tutorials in a few weeks. In the meantime, ACerS and the tutorial presenters are making their PowerPoint presentations available for download:

Hydrogen Storage Technologies: A Tutorial with Perspectives from the US National Program [3MB]
Ned T. Stetson, Technology Development Manager, Hydrogen Program, DOE

Air Force Energy Program [2MB]
Bobby Diltz, Energy Systems Research Group, Air Force Research Laboratory Airbase Technologies Division

Photovoltaics: Past, Present, and Future [4MB]
Ryne P. Raffaelle, Director, National Center for Photovoltaics, National Renewable Energy Lab

Material Needs in Alternative and Renewable Energy for the Automotive Industry [6MB]
Mark Verbrugge, Director, Chemical Sciences and Materials System Lab, General Motors R&D

Wind Energy: Background, Technology, Opportunities, & Material Challenges [3MB]
Jose Zayas, Program Manager, Wind & Water Power Technologies, Sandia National Labs

Advanced Materials & Manufacturing for the Clean Energy Future
P.J. Dougherty, Strategic Marketing Innovations

Advances in Battery Technology (to come)
Yet-Ming Chiang, MIT and cofounder of A123 Systems

Materials Challenges in Nuclear Energy (to come)
Steve Zinkle, Oak Ridge National Lab