Novel approach for fabrication of hollow metal compound nanospheres

A novel process to fabricate rigid hollow spheres of less than 100 nm is described in the current paper. These hollow nanospheres were fabricated in an emulsion via an electrostatic deposition approach to synthesise a metal compound shell around wax particles. The wax cores were then removed via the calcination of composite spheres under a process of intermittent temperature raising to produce metal compound hollow spheres. The shell/core composite spheres were characterised by transmission electron microscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, X-ray powder diffraction and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, while the hollow spheres were characterised by transmission electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. The hollow core size and the metal compound shell thickness can be easily varied over significant size ranges.