Silica-based nanocasting synthesis of a nanostructured carbon replica inevitably involves the disposal of silica waste and toxic etchant after the time-consuming and costly etching processes for selective removal of silica template from a carbon/silica composite to produce the silica-free carbon replica, not only resulting in chemical waste, but also posing serious environmental concerns. Instead of removal of the silica template, the in situ recrystallization transformation of the silica into more useful functional nanostructured silica offers an attractive alternative to the problem of handling silica waste and toxic etchants. In this work, the novel composites composed of microporous zeolite ZSM-5 crystals and hollow core-mesoporous shell carbon (HCMSC) capsules are synthesized for the first time by such transformation process of sacrificial silica template in the carbon/solid core-mesoporous shell silica (SCMSS) composite through hydrothermal process under alkaline condition. Compared to the commercia...