Fabrication of porous hollow glass microspheres

Porous hollow glass microspheres have many uses, including porosity enhancers for lead-acid batteries. A fast, facile and high yield synthetic method for fabricating porous hollow glass microspheres with diameters around 45-55 mu m is demonstrated. The process involves shaking commercially available hollow glass microspheres in dilute hydrofluoric acid for 20 min. This process yielded two pore morphologies by using different commercially available starting materials; sponge-like submicron pores etched from S38 microspheres, and straight through micron pore etched from K25. Yields were 33% and 40%, respectively. The simplicity of the reported fabrication technique has the potential to be scaled up for large scale production. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.