Free-standing and mechanically flexible mats consisting of electrospun carbon nanofibers made from a natural product of alkali lignin as binder-free electrodes for high-performance supercapacitors

High energy density supercapacitors from lignin derived submicron activated carbon fibers in aqueous electrolytes

“…The produced specific capacitances are much higher than that of unactivated lignin based sub-micron carbon fiber (67 F g À1 ) [37] and lignin-based mesoporous carbon (102.3 F g À1 ) [38]. Moreover, at a relatively high scanning of 50 mV s À1 , 4.3 and 8.1 Wh kg À1 energy densities were achieved for Na-ACF and K-ACF respectively, showing either comparable (Na-ACF) to, or much better performance (K-ACF) than the 3e5 Wh kg À1 energy density of commercialized activated carbon [9].…”

Preparation of Different Carbon Materials by Thermochemical Conversion of Lignin

“…In another approach, CFs were prepared by electrospinning of alkali-lignin/PVA 9-12 wt% aqueous mixtures (30/70, 50/50, and 70/30). The average diameters decreased from 300 to 140 nm with increasing the lignin amount, the finest ever reported lignin-based CFs, what was attributed to a decreasing viscosity and increasing conductivity of the blends (Lai et al, 2014a).…”

“…Kubo et al (2007) studied the porosity of HKL/PP-derived CFs and found that, during the thermostabilization process, pores are created by oxidative degradation of PP, whereas upon carbonization, the residual PP is subsequently pyrolyzed to effectively create porosity (up to~500 m 2 /g) in the resulting CFs. Similarly, the carbonization of electrospun lignin/PVA (70/30) fibers resulted in A BET of 580 m 2 /g (Lai et al, 2014a). More interestingly, the carbonization of electrospun Alcell lignin gave rise to microporous CFs with high A BET and pore volumes of up to 1200 m 2 /g and 0.520 cm 3 /g, respectively.…”

Fabrication, Property, and Application of Lignin-Based Nanocomposites

“…Lai and co-workers prepared mechanically flexible mats consisting of electrospun carbon nanofibers (ECNFs) by electrospinning aqueous mixtures of alkali lignin and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), followed by stabilization in air and carbonization in inert environment [60]. The ECNFs well retained the overall morphologies of their precursors (neat PVA nanofibers and lignin/PVA composite nanofibers), and showed about 30 % reduction of fiber diameters.…”