Encapsulation pyrolysis synchronous deposition for hollow carbon sphere with tunable textural properties

Abstract

Hollow carbon nanostructures with tunable structure have inspired increasing interests in energy conversion/storage, biomedicine, catalysis, and adsorption, etc. However, rigorous control of textural properties is challenging. Herein, we report a novel, facile and mild encapsulation pyrolysis synchronous deposition strategy to synthesize hollow carbon spheres (HCSs) with tunable structure similar to moon phases during different stage. This method directly transform the polystyrene spheres, which are widely used as sacrifice hard template, into carbon by a pyrolysis process in an encapsulated silica shell without any cross-linking agent and catalyst. The tunable structure of HCSs is achieved in the compact silica shell which provides a hermetical nanospace to allow the encapsulation and deposition. These various hollow structures show interesting properties and potential for different applications, such as supercapacitors.