In this paper, our effort was focused on preparation and oxygen sensing of luminescence carbon dots (CDs) assembled hollow mesoporous silica microspheres (HMSMs) and mesoporous silica microspheres (MSMs). MSMs doped with CDs showed shorter response time and recovery time comparing with HMSMs doped with CDs. This feature can be attributed to ordered channel structure of mesoporous carrier which can promote the gas diffusion effectively. While HMSMs doped with CDs shows a higher oxygen quenching response and the degree of quenching reach 80.35%. The response time was determined to be about 7 s and the emission intensities of the samples were effectively reduced as the concentration of oxygen increased. These results indicate that the system we have developed can be used for oxygen detection in wide concentration range and is especially accurate for very low oxygen concentrations. The obtained CDs grafted hollow mesoporous silica microspheres (HMSMs) and mesoporous silica microspheres (MSMs) samples appears to be a promising sensing material for environmental detection application and would also find applications in catalyst, electrode, or related fields. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.