To improve and extend the SiO2 template method for preparing metal oxide hollow spheres, a general and facile "sol-gel and hydrothermal" method is developed to replace the current "sol-gel, calcination, and base-etching" processes for the construction of well-defined sandwich metal oxide@noble metal NP@metal oxide hollow spheres. As-synthesized hollow spheres exhibit high performances in various catalytic reactions.
Keywords: catalysis; hollow spheres; hydrothermal synthesis; metal oxides; noble metal nanoparticles; sandwich structures; sol-gel processes.
© 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.