Synthesis of hollow mesoporous silica spheres and carambola-like silica materials with a novel resin sphere as template

• HMSs have been prepared by a facile dual-templating method.
• A detailed formation mechanism of HMSs was proposed.
• Adjusting the molar ratio of TEOS/CTAB can be obtained using the different shell thicknesses of HMSs.
• One-pot method was employed to synthesize carambola-like silica with large hollow cavity.

Hollow mesoporous silica spheres with wormlike mesoporous were synthesized by a dual-templating method using resorcinol/formaldehyde resin spheres as hard templates and cationic surfactant (CTAB) as soft template. The average particles diameters were adjusted by changing molar ratio of TEOS/CTAB. Carambola-like silica materials with hollow structure can be obtained using one-pot method.