Carbon black-based porous sub-micron carbon fibers for flexible supercapacitors

Abstract

Construction of functional materials using low-dimensional carbons has attracted tremendous attention in the field of energy storage devices. Herein, porous carbon black (CB) is used as the dominant building unit to construct porous sub-micron carbon fibers by electrospinning and pyrolysis with polyacrylonitrile (PAN)-based pyrolytic carbon as the binder. Inheriting abundant pores and surface area from the porous CB, the resultant CB-based sub-micron fibers present considerable porosity and specific surface area. The PAN-based pyrolytic carbon endows the CB-based sub-micron carbon fibers with a considerable quantity of N/O-containing surface. CB content plays a crucial role in improving thermal stability, flexibility, and conductivity of the resultant sub-micron carbon fibers. The CB-based sub-micron carbon fibers present a considerable specific capacitance, excellent cycling stability and can be used electrodes for flexible supercapacitors.