Facile fabrication of hollow mono-dispersed TiO2 spheres in an aqueous solution

A simple one-step process was developed to fabricate hollow mono-dispersed TiO2 spheres with different shell thickness using methacrylic acid functionalized polystyrene spheres as a template and TiCl4 solution as the precursor. The whole process was carried out in an aqueous solution. A plausible mechanism was proposed to elucidate the formation of the hollow TiO2 spheres.