Fabrication of hollow silica microspheres utilizing a hydrothermal approach

Hollow silica microspheres (HSMSs) have been successfully fabricated via a facile hydrothermal route using D-glucose as the sacrificial template and sodium silicate powder as the silica precursor. The resulting silica hollow particles were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and infrared spectroscopy (IR). The surface area was determined using the BET method. SEM and TEM images exhibited micro-sized silica hollow particles with a size of ~1.5 μm.