A facile approach to the fabrication of rattle-type magnetic carbon nanospheres for removal of methylene blue in water

Rattle-type magnetic carbon nanospheres were obtained easily by annealing core-shell-shell hybrid nanospheres. The nanospheres were fabricated by combining, in a single step, a tetraethyl orthosilicate sol-gel process and the condensation polymerization of resorcinol and formaldehyde in the presence of ammonia. Subsequent annealing and silicon dioxide removal in sodium hydroxide solution resulted in materials with a high specific surface area (250.3 m(2) g(-1)) that could be separated easily from aqueous media using an external magnetic field. Methylene blue was selected as a typical organic pollutant to test adsorption and Fenton catalytic degradation performance. The results demonstrate the potential applicability of the rattle-type magnetic carbon nanospheres. The nanospheres could remove methylene blue rapidly with an adsorption capacity of 45.15 mg g(-1). They can also effectively catalyze the degradation of methylene blue because of their special structure. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.