Aerogels are highly porous solid materials with more than 80% porosity and the cell size in mesoporous, 2-50 nm, range. The nanostructure assembly and high porosity provided the aerogels with unique electrical, thermal, physical, and mechanical properties. With respect the fast development of the modern technology and the need for the metamaterials with improved performance, recently the aerogels are received significant attention from the scientist. Based on the previous studies among the aerogel types, the polyimide aerogels presented the capability to achieve high mechanical flexibility in thin film geometries as well as moisture resistance. These along with the higher service temperature over the other organics, presented the potential of polyimide aerogels to be used in wide range of industrial applications.

However, with respect to the very sensitive relations between the aerogel nanostructure configuration and its properties, the lack of control on aerogel nanostructure formation significantly reduced the possibility of tailoring polyimide aerogel properties to fit with in the industrial requirements. Given this background, the focus of this research is to design and develop robust methods to tailor the aerogels nanostructure configuration to achieve the aerogels with optimum performance.

From the results four different successful strategies in tailoring the aerogel nanostructure assembly and controlling its properties are implemented in this work, and the properties of the fabricated aerogel prototypes are characterized through fully parametric studies. The capability of tailoring and improving the properties of polyimide aerogels may warrant their penetration in wide range of industrial applications.