Abstract: A product includes a polymer aerogel. The aerogel is physically characterized by having a transparency greater than or equal to 90% transmission of visible light through a 3 mm thickness of the aerogel. The aerogel includes at least one oligomer selected from the group consisting of: a polyamide, a polyimide, a polyacrylate, a polyvinyl, and a polythioether. A method includes dissolving at least one monomer in at least one solvent to form a mixture and causing polymerization of the at least one monomer to form at least one oligomer. The method also includes causing crosslinking of the at least one oligomer, initiating gelation of a product of the crosslinking and the at least one solvent to form an aerogel precursor; and forming an aerogel from the aerogel precursor.

Abstract: The present disclosure provides cost-effective sol-gel methods to produce nanostructured, nanoporous vanadium oxides from inexpensive vanadium halides of the formula VOX3. In one aspect, a synthetic method for preparing vanadium (IV,V) mixed oxide gels is described comprising epoxide-assisted gelation of a vanadium halide of the formula VOX3, such as VOCl3. The resulting aerogels are robust and possess similar morphology and reactivity to gels fabricated via the significantly more costly vanadium alkoxide methods.