Electrospun porous carbon nanofibers @ SnOx nanocomposites for high-performance supercapacitors: Microstructures and electrochemical properties

Porous carbon nanofibers (PCNFs)@Tin oxide (SnO x ) nanocomposites are synthesized by co-electrospinning using renewable alkali lignin-polyaniline (PAN) solution as the core and Sn precursors-polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) solution as the shell, followed by heat treatment. By changing the preheating temperature during heat treatment, PCNFs@SnO x nanocomposites with different nanostructures are obtained. The nanocomposites as electrodes of supercapacitors exhibit remarkable performance. The relationship between the microstructures and electrochemical properties of nanocomposites is explored. The experimental results show that increasing the preheating temperature to 300 °C, micropores and mesopores coexist in this nanocomposite. The prepared nanocomposite as the electrode possesses a high specific capacitance of 229 F g −1 at 0.2 A g −1 . The superior electrochemical performance is presumably attributed to the large specific surface areas of PCNFs and pseudocapacitance of SnO x modifications. These encouraging results show great potential in synthesizing renewable biomass-based PCNFs@ SnO x nanocomposites with different structures.