An ultra fast sol gel process has been developed to get high content silica materials, in which, the solvent tetrahydrofuran(THF) for hydrolysis of precursor tetraethyl orthosilicate, was removed through solvent extraction to obtain bulk sol. The bulk sol can be molded in different shapes such as discoid, pellet, octagon, cylinder, and half sphere. They solidified and gelled in a very short time in the presence of lithium salt. Measurements show that the silica monoliths possess volume shrinkage of 52%, ...