Highly Active Zinc Sulfide Composite Microspheres: A Versatile Templates for Synthesis of a Family of Hollow Nanostructures of Sulfides

Hollow nanostructures of metal sulfide have gained tremendous attention in catalysis, biomedicine, energy storage and conversion owing to their intriguing structural features and fascinating physicochemical properties. Here we reported a hard template engaged cation exchange method to fabricate a family of binary or ternary metal sulfide (CuS, Ag2S, Bi2S3, CuxBi1-xS, ZnxCo1-xS, ZnxCd1-xS, ZnxNi1-xS and ZnxMn1-xS) hollow microspheres via adjusting the reaction kinetic parameters including solvent, temperature in presence of unique ZnS composite microspheres. Particularly, the shell layer thickness of metal sulfide hollow microspheres could be modulated by manipulating the reaction temperature during the cation exchanging procedure. Meanwhile, the desired elementary composition of ternary metal sulfide hollow microspheres could be achieved by varying the mole ratio and species of metal source. This synthetic strategy could be extended to rationally design and construct other metal sulfide hollow nanostructu...