We report here the fabrication of hollow silica particles with mesopores larger than 10 nm on their wall via a facile two-step etching method. Different from the conventional template method, the new method uses the silica particles as starting materials, which were synthesized using the well-known Stober method. In the hollow silica preparation, first, we gently etch the silica particles with a NaOH solution without using template molecules to make them porous. Then, we coat the porous silica particles with poly-dimethyldiallylammonium chloride (PDDA) and treat the PDDA-coated porous silica with an ammonia solution to form the hollow silica nanospheres. In this study, we found that the NaOH dosage and ammonia concentration have significant impact on the morphology of the final products. Adsorption was also studied and results show that the hollow nanospheres can effectively uptake protein-based biomolecules (hemoglobin). (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.