Preparation and Characterization of Acrylated-SiO₂@TiO₂ Hollow Hybrid Nanospheres

Novel inorganic–organic hybrid hollow nanospheres, acrylated SiO₂ and SiO₂@TiO₂, were synthesized via a sol–gel polymerization, using crown-appended sugar gelator 1 as an organic template for the unique nanospherical structures in demand for a fast expanding area in nanomaterial research. In this work, hollow SiO₂ nanospheres were obtained by a simple sol–gel method followed by calcination and rather rough TiO₂ nanolayers were coated onto the highly dispersed surface of SiO₂ nanospheres and further copolymerization of MPA on the surface of SiO₂ and SiO₂@TiO₂ nanosphseres was successfully conducted. The morphological properties of those hollow nanospheres were characterized by TEM, SEM and powder-XRD. Furthermore, the physical and chemical properties of the synthesized nanocomposites were characterized by the analysis of EDX, FT-IR, TGA and ESCA.