A facile electrospinning strategy to prepare cost-effective carbon fibers as a self-supporting anode for lithium-ion batteries

Carbon materials with fibrous morphology and enhanced mechanical properties have shown to be promising materials as self-supporting anode materials for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). In this study, coal-based carbon fibers (CFs) with favorable flexibility and superior tensile strength were prepared from lignite and coal derivatives such as coal-based humic acid and coal tar pitch via electrospinning in the assistance of polyacrylonitrile. All these coal-based CFs have an 1D dense fibrous microstructure with controllable diameter and appreciable specific surface area with enriched in O/N-containing groups by rationally choosing the precursor type. The organic macromolecules enriched aromatic ring in lignite and coal derivatives cross-link with linear polyacrylonitrile molecular chains to form a more solid three-dimensional (3D) network framework under the conditions of electrospinning and carbonization. Such 3D microstructure not only can significantly improve the flexibility and tensile strength of coal-based CFs, but also can increase the content of graphite-like microcrystalline carbon (sp(2) carbon) in carbon fibers, thereby improving the electrical conductivity. Due to the smaller molecular structure, coal tar pitch can be more easily combined with polyacrylonitrile by electrostatic force. The CFs derived from coal tar pitch (CTP-CFs) exhibited the largest average diameter (156.2 nm), a higher microporous surface area (2.6 m(2)center dot g(-1)), higher pyrrole nitrogen and contained reasonable proportions of amorphous carbon (sp(3) carbon) and sp(2) carbon. As a consequence, among the various derived coal-based CFs applied as self-supporting anode materials for LIBs, CTP-CFs showed the highest first reversible capacity (770.8 mAh center dot g(-1) at 20 mA center dot g(-1)) and excellent cycling performance with capacity retention rate of 89.1 % after 200 cycles. This work paves a new strategy to prepare CFs as flexible self-supporting anodes for LIBs from low-cost carbon precursors that can be rationally chosen to further tune the property of the CFs.