Ceramic aerogels are highly efficient, lightweight, and chemically stable thermal insulation materials but their application is hindered by their brittleness and low strength. Flexible nanostructure-assembled compressible aerogels have been developed to overcome the brittleness but they still show low strength, leading to insufficient load-bearing capacity. Here we designed and fabricated a laminated SiC-SiO_x nanowire aerogel that exhibits reversible compressibility, recoverable buckling deformation, ductile tensile deformation, and simultaneous high strength of up to an order of magnitude larger than other ceramic aerogels. The aerogel also shows good thermal stability ranging from −196 °C in liquid nitrogen to above 1200 °C in butane blow torch, and good thermal insulation performance with a thermal conductivity of 39.3 ± 0.4 mW m⁻¹ K⁻¹. These integrated properties make the aerogel a promising candidate for mechanically robust and highly efficient flexible thermal insulation materials.

Perovskite LaFeO₃/montmorillonite nanocomposites (LaFeO₃/MMT) have been successfully prepared via assembling LaFeO₃ nanoparticles on the surface of montmorillonite with citric acid assisted sol-gel method. The results indicated that the uniform LaFeO₃ nanoparticles were densely deposited onto the surface of montmorillonite, mainly ranging in diameter from 10 nm to 15 nm. The photocatalytic activity of LaFeO₃/MMT was evaluated by the degradation of Rhodamine B (RhB) under visible light irradiation, indicating that LaFeO₃/MMT exhibited remarkable adsorption efficiency and excellent photocatalytic activity with the overall removal rate of RhB up to 99.34% after visible light irradiation lasting for 90 min. The interface characteristic and possible degradation mechanism were explored. The interface characterization of LaFeO₃/MMT suggested that LaFeO₃ nanoparticles could be immobilized on the surface of montmorillonite with the Si-O-Fe bonds. The abundant hydroxyl groups of montmorillonite, semiconductor photocatalysis of LaFeO₃ and Fenton-like reaction could enhance the photocatalytic degradation through a synergistic effect. Therefore, the LaFeO₃/MMT is a very promising photocatalyst in future industrial application to treat effectively wastewater of dyes.