December 3, 2025 – Recent reports indicate that silica has achieved significant technological breakthroughs in extreme environment materials and medical antibacterial fields. Its innovative applications in composite material reinforcement and medical modification have provided new solutions for the upgrading of aerospace equipment and the precise treatment of skin wounds, respectively.

In the field of extreme environment materials, a major breakthrough has been made in the development of novel dual-phase node ceramic aerogels, with amorphous silica serving as the core key to balancing high strength and super elasticity. Previously, ceramic aerogels often faced the bottleneck of being unable to reconcile strength and elasticity. However, the newly developed aerogel constructs a "soft-hard" dual-phase node structure by forming an amorphous silica layer on the surface of silicon carbide nanowires, combined with a pyrolytic carbon coating. Silica can uniformly disperse stress to improve load efficiency, while pyrolytic carbon alleviates local stress concentration. Through their synergistic effect, the aerogel achieves a compressive strength of 10.9 MPa at 80% strain and an elastic recovery rate of approximately 90%. Tests show that its performance far exceeds that of most existing elastic ceramics and aerogels. It maintains stable viscoelasticity within the temperature range of -120°C to 300°C and retains consistent performance after 100,000 loading cycles. In the future, it can be widely applied in extreme scenarios such as aerospace thermal protection systems and high-temperature vibration-damping insulators.

In the field of medical materials, research teams have solved the application bottleneck of silica antibacterial materials through surface modification technology. Although mesoporous silica loaded with silver nanoparticles exhibits excellent antibacterial properties and low cytotoxicity, its surface negative charge easily causes electrostatic repulsion with negatively charged bacteria, limiting antibacterial efficacy. Researchers adopted a two-step plasma method to graft positively charged amine-fluorocarbon polymers onto the silica surface, successfully adjusting its surface charge state. The modified composite material achieves a bactericidal rate of over 98% against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli, with antibacterial performance improved by 7.4 times and 4.37 times respectively compared to the original. Meanwhile, the material can reduce wound inflammatory responses and accelerate healing through specific signaling pathways, addressing the issues of uneven functional group distribution and easy hydrolysis/peeling in traditional modification methods. It provides more reliable material support for the treatment of infectious wounds such as chronic skin ulcers and burns.

These two technological innovations have expanded the application boundaries of silica in high-end industrial materials and medical materials respectively, injecting new momentum into the technological upgrading and product innovation of related industries.