Efficient Green Synthesis of Hollow Silica Nanoparticles

Abstract

The traditional acid-base etching method to prepare hollow silica nanoparticles often causes safety and environmental problems. Thus, an efficient green method to synthesize the hollow silica nanoparticles is proposed in this paper. The hollow silica nanoparticles were prepared by deposition of silicon dioxide(SiO_2) on the polystyrene template and removal of template by calcination. The structure of this material was characterized by scanning electron microscopy(SEM), transmission electron microscopy(TEM), energy dispersive spectrometer(EDS), fourier transform infrared spectrometer(FTIR), X-ray diffraction analyzer(XRD), thermogravimetric analyzer(TGA) and brunner emmet teller(BET) measurements. The results show that there was an obvious hollow structure of the hollow SiO_2 nanoparticles and the particle diameter was about 120 nm. Furthermore, the hollow silica nanoparticles contained Si and O. The hollow silica nanoparticles had great thermal stability in the range of 20-780 ℃. What′s more, the N_2 adsorption stripping curve showed the characteristics of S type adsorption isotherm. There was an obvious hysteresis ring in this curve, and the specific surface area was 568.82 m~2/g.

Keywords

• silica
• hollow silica nanoparticle
• synthesis
• structure characterization