Facile Fabrication of Hollow Silica and Titania Microspheres Using Plasma-Treated Polystyrene Spheres as Sacrificial Templates

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

By means of a plasma technique, the surfaces of monodisperse polystyrene (PS) colloids have been modified with hydroxyl groups. Using these surface-modified PS colloids as sacrificial templates, we have fabricated silica-coated PS colloids (PS@silica) and titania-coated PS colloids (PS@titania) composite microspheres as well as hollow and mesoporous silica and titania microspheres. This process not only demonstrated a facile, low-cost, environmentally benign way to fabricate hollow oxides structures but also offered a feasible alternative to the preparation of polymer/inorganic oxide composites by templating against the polymer substrate with hydrophobic surfaces.