Facile synthesis of hollow silica microspheres

Christabel E. Fowler; Deepa Khushalani; Stephen Mann

doi:10.1039/B102675P

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Christabel E. Fowler,^a Deepa Khushalani †^a and Stephen Mann*^a

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* Corresponding authors

^a School of Chemistry, Univeristy of Bristol, UK
E-mail: s.mann@bris.ac.uk

Abstract

Hollow silica microspheres were synthesised at room temperature from a vortexed mixture of water and droplets of tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) containing 10 mol% aminopropyltriethoxysilane: droplets stabilized with the surfactant cetyltrimethylammonium bromide produced silica shells, 30.6 µm in mean diameter, whereas replacing the Br⁻ counterion with [Co(B₉C₂H₁₁)₂]⁻ gave an approximately hundred-fold decrease in the size of the hollow spheres. Organo-functionalized hollow microspheres containing a covalently linked dye moiety were prepared by replacing 5 mol% of TEOS with dinitrophenylaminotriethoxysilane in the reaction mixture, and encapsulation of TEOS-soluble additives within the silica shells was demonstrated by incorporating porphyrin molecules and particles into the ethoxysilane droplets.

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Article information

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/B102675P
Article type: Communication
Submitted: 22 Mar 2001
Accepted: 31 May 2001
First published: 11 Jul 2001

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J. Mater. Chem., 2001,11, 1968-1971

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