Fabrication of hollow silica nanosphere and its application for thermal insulation coating

Abstract

Hollow silica nanospheres (HSNs) were synthesized via sol–gel method followed by calcination, using positively charged polystyrene (PS) as a hard template, and the tetraethoxysilane as precursor. The inner diameter and shell thickness of the HSNs can be expediently controlled by adjusting the particle size of PS and the amount of ammonia, respectively. The average inner diameters of HSNs increased from 153 nm to 255 nm along with the increasing PS particle size from 150 nm to 300 nm. The shell thickness of HSNs decreased from 20 nm to 12 nm with the increasing amount of ammonia from 1.5 mL to 3.0 mL. The structure of HSNs was verified by Fourier-transform infrared, thermogravimetric, scanning electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy characterization. The prepared thermal insulation coating comprised of HSNs shows good temperature retention and thermo-insulating properties, which indicate that the as-prepared HSNs are potentially used as an inorganic filler for thermal insulation coating.