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Artificial synthesis of hollow cell walls of diatoms is an ultimate target of nanomaterial science. The addition of some water-soluble polymers such as sodium polymethacrylate to a solution of water/oil/water emulsion system, which is an essential step of the simple synthetic procedure of silica hollow spheres (microcapsules), led to the formation of silica hollow spheres with nano-macroholes (>100 nm) in their shell walls, the morphologies of which are analogous to those of diatom earth.
Fujiwara et al. (2006) studied this question.