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The ballistic performance of edge-clamped monolithic polyimide aerogel blocks (12 mm thickness) has been studied through a series of impact tests using a helium-filled gas gun connected to a vacuum chamber and a spherical steel projectile (approximately 3 mm diameter) with an impact velocity range of 150–1300 m s⁻¹. The aerogels had an average bulk density of 0.17 g cm⁻³with high porosity of approximately 88%. The ballistic limit velocity of the aerogels was estimated to be in the range of 175–179 m s⁻¹. Moreover, the aerogels showed a robust ballistic energy absorption performance (e.g., at the impact velocity of 1283 m s⁻¹at least 18% of the impact energy was absorbed). At low impact velocities, the aerogels failed by ductile hole enlargement followed by a tensile failure. By contrast, at high impact velocities, the aerogels failed through an adiabatic shearing process. Given the substantially robust ballistic performance, the polyimide aerogels have a potential to combat multiple constraints such as cost, weight, and volume restrictions in aeronautical and aerospace applications with high blast resistance and ballistic performance requirements such as in stuffed Whipple shields for orbital debris containment application.

Formation of thick, high energy density, flexible solid supercapacitors is challenging because of difficulties infilling gel electrolytes into porous electrodes. Incomplete infilling results in a low capacitance and poor mechanical properties. Here we report a bottom-up infilling method to overcome these challenges. Electrodes up to 500 μm thick, formed from multi-walled carbon nanotubes and a composite of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene), polystyrene sulfonate and multi-walled carbon nanotubes are successfully infilled with a polyvinyl alcohol/phosphoric acid gel electrolyte. The exceptional mechanical properties of the multi-walled carbon nanotube-based electrode enable it to be rolled into a radius of curvature as small as 0.5 mm without cracking and retain 95% of its initial capacitance after 5000 bending cycles. The areal capacitance of our 500 μm thick poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene), polystyrene sulfonate, multi-walled carbon nanotube-based flexible solid supercapacitor is 2662 mF cm^–2at 2 mV s^–1, at least five times greater than current flexible supercapacitors.