Precursors for aerogels

The development of technology and emerging precursors for a variety of aerogels is described. This is followed by a description of recent advances in simple and heterometal alkoxides, which appear to hold promise as the most attractive precursors for aerogels, similar to their enhancing applications for other types of materials by the sol-gel process. Attention is directed to the need for more extensive and intensive investigations on the fundamental as well as applied aspects of exploiting these for the preparation of mono- as well as hetero-metal oxide aerogels