A facile and novel approach for preparing monodispersed hollow aluminosilica microspheres with thin shell structures

Abstract

Monodispersed hollow aluminosilica microspheres (HAMs) with thin shell structures have been successfully synthesized via a novel method. The facile strategy is simple, efficient, and highly controllable. A NaAlO₂ aqueous solution is firstly employed as an alkaline solution to directly etch silica microspheres hard templates without additional surfactants to form monodispersed hollow microspheres. On the basis of the proposed formation mechanism of etching followed by co-assembly, the size of HAMs is fully dependent on the size of silica sphere hard templates.