Electrospun carbon nanofibers from PAN and a loose medium component of coal as binder-free electrodes for supercapacitors

Background: Despite the significant progress of co-spinning strategy to prepare 1D hierarchical porous carbon nanofibers, reducing raw material cost and improving specific surface area (SSA) utilization ratio still needs further improvement.Methods: The binder-free and flexible carbon nanofibers (CNFs) are fabricated using a blend of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and a loose medium component (LMC) of coal via electrospinning, followed by pre-oxidation and carbonization process.Significant findings: LMC, an effective pore-enhancing modifier for CNFs, can increase pore volume and improve electrochemical performance while retaining the basic characteristics of good pore structure and pore size distribution (PSD). The prepared materials have higher SSA utilization, mainly due to the dominant pore distribution of 0.9 nm and the special fibrous properties, which are different from ordinary porous carbon. The supercapacitor electrodes prepared from LCNF3 possess a high specific capacitance (227.4 F g(-1) at 1 A g(-1)) and outstanding cycling stability (104.3% capacitance retention after 10,000 cycles). This work provides a new perspective for increasing the pore volume of CNFs prepared by electrospinning and realizing coal's high value-added utilization.(c) 2022 Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.