Effect of the drying on morphology and texture of aerogels and zirconia cryogels

Due to their excellent properties, aerogel has attracted the attention of the scientific community to use it in the biomedical area as a drug delivery system. This work reports on the synthesis and characterization of ZrO 2 aerogels and cryogels obtained by the sol-gel method. The influence of different cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and the type of drying on structural, morphological and texture properties of ZrO 2 aerogels and cryogels was investigated. SEM images reveal that a porous interconnected three-dimensional network was formed into aerogels due to supercritical drying. Zirconia aerogel sample has a specific surface area (S BET ) larger than zirconia cryogels. Therefore, our results indicate that zirconia aerogel is an adequate material for applications in drug delivery systems.