A novel approach for fabrication of hollow carbon spheres with large size and high specific surface area

Hollow carbon spheres (HCSs) were synthesized on a large scale using phenolic resin (PR) as carbon pre-cursor and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as template. The as-prepared spheres had a maximum external diameter of about 1.1 mm and average shell thickness of about 0.2 mm. In addition, The HCSs had a high specific surface area of 1036 m(2)g(-1) and total pore volume of 0.84 cm(3)g(-1). (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.