Light microspheres have attracted lots of attention of researchers recently

because of high specific surface areas

high loads

excellent stability

high surface permeability and low density. This review focuses on the recent progress of light microspheres including hollow microspheres

and porous microspheres

introduces several new synthesis methods

such as seed swelling polymerization

suspension polymerization

template method

LBL assembly

surface-molecular imprinting method and liquid-liquid phase separation technique

summarizes the applications

including biomedical

wastewater treatment

coating

biosensor and electronic information fields

and give an outlook of some future research directions

including control of inner cavity structures of hollow microspheres

modulation of particular pore structure of porous microspheres and so on.