A facile method to fabricate ZnO hollow spheres and their photocatalytic property

Abstract

This paper presents a novel and facile method for the fabrication of ZnO hollow spheres. In this approach, zinc ions were first adsorbed onto the surfaces of sulfonated polystyrene core-shell template spheres, and then reacted with NaOH to form a ZnO crystal nucleus, which was followed by a growth step to form ZnO nanoshells. During the formation of ZnO nanoshells or later on, the template spheres were "dissolved" in the same media to obtain ZnO hollow spheres directly. Neither additional dissolution nor calcination process was needed in this method to remove the templates, and the reaction conditions were very mild: neither high temperature nor long time was needed. Transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller analysis were used to investigate the morphology, surface composition, crystalline structure, specific surface area, and porosity of the ZnO hollow spheres, respectively. UV-visible spectra show that these ZnO hollow spheres had very good photocatalytic activity.