Recently, a research team led by Professor Zhu Qingshan from the Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has developed a precursor hydrolysis method, successfully achieving mass production of silica multi-shelled hollow microsphere powders. The relevant research results have been published in Advanced Materials.

Silica multi-shelled hollow microsphere powders, featuring high specific surface area, low density, and excellent chemical stability, hold great potential in fields such as industrial catalysis and pharmaceutical carriers. However, their traditional preparation method – the template method – is costly and faces difficulties in mass production.

The new method is based on fluidization technology. It prepares diimino silicon-containing precursors through the ammonia decomposition of silicon tetrachloride, and then obtains the product after hydrolysis and drying. This method eliminates processes like template preparation and high-temperature etching, improving the synthesis efficiency by two orders of magnitude compared with the traditional method, reducing the cost by one order of magnitude, and enabling the regulation of the cavity size, dimension, and pore structure of the microsphere powders.