A novel, hierarchical morphology of budded mesoporous silica hollow spheres (see figure), comprising a wormholelike mesoporous shell and protruding lamellar (vesicular) mesostructured buds, is fabricated by a unique, single-step, emulsion-templating method in which the sodium salt of N-lauroylsarcosine is used as both a surfactant and an oil phase after acidification.