To
develop economical and high-performance water electrolyte supercapacitor
electrodes, low-cost and cross-linked carbon nanofibers (CNFs) were
prepared with an electrospinning method by using PAN, lignin, and
PMMA as precursors. The addition of lignin not only reduces the cost
of the carbon nanofibers but also increases the specific surface area
of the CNFs by removing carbonyls, and phenol functional groups of
lignin during thermal treatment. The effect of PMMA addition was investigated
to prepare the optimal candidate for the supercapacitor electrodes.
The results showed that the CNFs from PAN, PMMA, and lignin (PPLCNFs-x, x is the content of PMMA in the spinning
solution) showed excellent electrochemical performance in alkaline
aqueous electrolyte. PPLCNFs-0.5g showed specific capacitance of 233
F g1– at 0.5 A g–1, an outstanding
stability of 96.8% when it was cycled 50 000 times at 2 A g–1, and it remained 54.5% of rate capability as current
density raising from 0.5 to 100 A g–1. The outstanding
electrochemical performance of PPLCNFs-0.5g is expected as a consequence
of the synergistic effect of larger specific surface area and cross-linked
structure. The cross-linked structure ensures rapid transmission of
electrons on the carbon nanofiber membrane, and the large specific
surface area is conducive to charge storage. This method offers a
new preparation approach for synthesizing high performance CNFs with
low-cost, cross-linked structures.