Corpse aerogels, are they plausible or not

[Bohandas]

I recently saw a video on aerogels and how they are made. The procedure reminded me a bit of plastination, in that the original fluid is replaced with a different fluid which is then made to undergo a phase change. This got me thinking, would it be possible to turn a corpse into an aerogel?

[gomipile]

The process might be possible, but the result wouldn't be an aerogel no matter how well it works. The starting product for an aerogel has to be a gel, which meat is not.

[Yora]

Even if, aerogels are extremely brittle. I think anything over 30 cm would be almost impossible to handle without breaking it.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Plastination is basically filling any cavities with plastic, as I understand it. (Going no-Google here, ignore me if I'm super wrong.) The cavities can be quite small, and can require some force to open up and be filled. So you'd need an aerogel with some decent physical attributes.

[Fat Rooster]

One problem is that supercritical CO2 is a pretty badass solvent of things water isn't. You might end up with just a skeleton and goo.

You would need to find something that is similar to water but has a much lower vapour pressure. Maybe solvent exchange with formaldehyde (which would also stiffen, and 'gelify' the specimen), and then with nitrogen. This second one will probably require high pressures.


I think drying of a corpse without surface tension effects should be doable, but it might not be easy.

[sktarq]

My immediate reaction is the issues of long, often interlinked/interwoven protein chains that make up much of the human body, especially the skin, sinews, and various membranes would not be replaced themselves directly and then interfere with the aerogel expansion/formation.
Kind of how bread with not just a high gluten content but that has been well worked has lots of smaller bubbles vs just letting the yeast CO2 outgas escape and not rise...with an aerogel you'd want the free outgassing version.