One-step synthesis of hollow N-substituted polypyrrole@β-FeOOH microspheres.

β -FeOOH nanorods-decorated hollow poly(N-2-cyanoethylpyrrole) (PNCPy) microspheres were fabricated via a self-templating method. The whole synthesis procedure only involved mixing FeCl 3 and N-(2-cyanoethyl)pyrrole (NCPy) monomer in ethanol/water mixed solution, eliminating the need of any other chemicals and additional postprocessing. • Hollow PNCPy@ β -FeOOH microspheres were fabricated via a self-templating strategy. • Whole synthetic procedure only involved mixing N-2-cyanoethylpyrrole and FeCl 3 without additional postprocessing. • The morphology and size of the composite microspheres could be facilely tuned. One-step fabrication of β -FeOOH nanorods-decorated hollow poly(N-2-cyanoethylpyrrole) microspheres via a self-templating approach is reported. In this strategy, N-(2-cyanoethyl)pyrrole (NCPy) droplets were employed as templates which not only provided the space for creating the inner voids but also were the source of monomer for building the outer poly(N-2-cyanoethylpyrrole) (PNCPy) shells. By simply mixing FeCl 3 ·6H 2 O and NCPy in ethanol/water mixed solution, hollow PNCPy@ β -FeOOH microspheres could be obtained without the use of any other chemicals. The influence of reaction conditions such as molar ratio of Fe3+ to NCPy, reaction time and reaction temperature on the size and morphology of the composites were investigated and the possible formation mechanism was presented. This facile and robust synthesis method shows overwhelming advantages compared with current fabrication technologies of PNCPy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]