Ultralight aerogels that are both highly resilient and compressible have been fabricated from various materials including polymer, carbon, and metal. However, it has remained a great challenge to realize high elasticity in aerogels solely based on ceramic components. We report a scalable strategy to create superelastic lamellar-structured ceramic nanofibrous aerogels (CNFAs) by combining SiO₂ nanofibers with aluminoborosilicate matrices. This approach causes the random-deposited SiO₂ nanofibers to assemble into elastic ceramic aerogels with tunable densities and desired shapes on a large scale. The resulting CNFAs exhibit the integrated properties of flyweight densities of >0.15 mg cm⁻³, rapid recovery from 80% strain, zero Poisson’s ratio, and temperature-invariant superelasticity to 1100°C. The integral ceramic nature also provided the CNFAs with robust fire resistance and thermal insulation performance. The successful synthesis of these fascinating materials may provide new insights into the development of ceramics in a lightweight, resilient, and structurally adaptive form.

Daylight-driven antimicrobial nanomaterials serve as a novel barrier for transmission of emerging infectious diseases.

Ceramic aerogels are attractive for many applications due to their ultralow density, high porosity, and multifunctionality but are limited by the typical trade-off relationship between mechanical properties and thermal stability when used in extreme environments. In this work, we design and synthesize ceramic nanofibrous aerogels with three-dimensional (3D) interwoven crimped-nanofibre structures that endow the aerogels with superior mechanical performances and high thermal stability. These ceramic aerogels are synthesized by a direct and facile route, 3D reaction electrospinning. They display robust structural stability with structure-derived mechanical ultra-stretchability up to 100% tensile strain and superior restoring capacity up to 40% tensile strain, 95% bending strain and 60% compressive strain, high thermal stability from −196 to 1400 °C, repeatable stretchability at working temperatures up to 1300 °C, and a low thermal conductivity of 0.0228 W m⁻¹ K⁻¹ in air. This work would enable the innovative design of high-performance ceramic aerogels for various applications.

This review focuses on electrospun flexible nanofibrous membranes with tunable wettability for oil/water separation, and future perspectives are discussed.