Nitrogen-doped hollow carbon spheres with large mesoporous shells engineered from diblock copolymer micelles

Nitrogen-doped hollow carbon spheres with engineered large tunable mesoporous (similar to 20 nm) shells were successfully synthesized for the first time by using the colloidal silica and the diblock copolymer PS-b-PEO as the dual-template and dopamine as the precursor. The unique structural properties enable them to be promising materials as adsorbents, catalyst supports, electrode materials, drug delivery carriers and hosts for active substances.