AbstractThis work presents a sol-gel carbon sphere template-assisted method of hollow Eu2O3 microspheres preparation. X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), as well as photoluminescence (PL) were used to characterise the products. The formation of hollow structure Eu2O3 microspheres can be assigned to a sol-gel carbon template. Furthermore, this work may confirm that the precursor sol-gel can be loaded onto the inner as well as the outer surface of carbon templates similarly as ions and nanocrystals. The presented method can afford a simple and efficient technique to obtain a series of hollow structure inorganic materials with high productivity.