Effect of reaction temperature The temperature of the hydrothermal reaction affected greatly not only the reaction (going or not) but Cilengitide research buy also the reaction rate (slow or fast). Additional file 1: selleck kinase inhibitor Figure S1 shows the TEM images of the as-prepared

samples at different reaction temperatures. No hollow-structure products appeared if the temperature T < 230°C in our experiments. The morphology and size of nanocrystals became difficult to control when the temperature was up to 260°C or higher because the higher the temperature was, the faster the reaction rate was. When T = 255°C, the quality of the obtained SiO2 · Re2O3 HSs was always poor. The experiments verify that the moderate temperature was 250°C. Effect of Re3+ ion and its concentration It was reported that Na2SO4 and NaCl were advantageous to HSS formation [52] and the work matter was Na+ cation, which was in line with our experimental data. Hereby, we investigated the synthesis of HSSs under different rare-earth ions and bivalent cations. In order to get uniform hollow structures, the optimal concentration of the rare-earth ions was usually kept in the range of 0.04 KU55933 to 0.08 mol/L. The experimental data and TEM images are depicted in Additional file 1: Table S1 and

Figure S2. The concentration less than 0.03 mol/L resulted in poor quality in production, and the concentration greater than 0.08 mol/L always led to products with not all having a hollow structure. The experiments showed that the lower or higher concentration of Re3+ ions was not good for HSS formation and 0.06 mol/L was the optimal concentration. Although the SiO2 · Re2O3 HSs were obtained based on the rare-earth ion assistance strategy, their 4��8C quality was quite different under assistance of different kinds of rare-earth ions. By keeping other reaction conditions unchanged such as the pH value of the solution, reaction time, and

reaction temperature, the influence of different Re3+ ions (Re = Y, Eu, La, Sm, Tb, Pr) on the structure of the as-prepared products was investigated (see Additional file 1: Table S2 and Figure S4). Additional file 1: Figure S4 clearly shows that the influence sequence of Re3+ was as follows: Eu3 + ≈ Sm3 + > Y3 + > Pr3 + ≈ La3 + > Tb3 +. Nearly all of the as-prepared samples were hollow spheres with good quality under the effect of Eu3+ and Sm3+ existence, and the experiments showed good reproducibility and satisfactory results. With Y3+, Pr3+, and La3+ ions included, all of the products always formed a mixture of HSSs and core/shell structure. Furthermore, all of the samples can be formed into a hollow sphere if the reaction time is prolonged, but the yield of HSSs was lower. Only a small amount of HSs could be obtained with Tb3+ existence. The experiments indicated that changing the reaction time did not work.