Synthesis of hollow silica nanospheres with raspberry-like morphology by sacrificial polystyrene templates for thermal insulation applications

The super insulating properties of hollow silica nanospheres, make them ideal candidate as potential nano insulating materials for energy efficient buildings and other applications. A small inner diameter and a thin wall thickness are generally required for hollow silica nanospheres to achieve as low thermal conductivity as possible. In this work hollow silica nanospheres with raspberry-like morphology with a pore diameter of about 100-300 nm and a shell thickness of 10−30 nm have been prepared by using emulsion polymerization of polyacrylic acid (PAA) functionalized polystyrene (PS) followed by the sol–gel process. The size of the PS templates and shell thickness could easily be controlled by adjusting the AA/styrene weight ratio and tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) concentration as silica precursor, respectively

Keywords:

Emulsion polymerization , Hollow silica nanosphere , Raspberry-like , Thermal insulation , Sol-gel process