Facile hydrothermal synthesis of Ag@AgCl@AlOOH hollow microspheres and their characterizations

Abstract In this paper, Ag@AgCl@AlOOH hollow microspheres were successfully synthesized with AgNO 3 and AlCl 3 ·6H 2 O in NaOH/urea solution by a facile hydrothermal method. NaOH/urea solution acted as structure-directing agent here. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) were used to characterize the as-prepared samples. The effects of hydrothermal heating temperatures on the phases and morphologies of samples were investigated. The size distributions analysis showed that the samples were Ag@AgCl@AlOOH microspheres with a diameter of 5.48~6.77 µm. With higher reaction temperatures, more Ag@AgCl@AlOOH microspheres with hollow structures appeared, and the size of Ag@AgCl@AlOOH microspheres decreased. The formation process of Ag@AgCl@AlOOH hollow microspheres was explored and discussed in detail.