Solution blowing of continuous carbon nanofiber yarn and its electrochemical performance for supercapacitors

• A facile spinning-based process was reported as novel nanofiber yarn fabricating method.
• Aligned polyacrylonitrile precursor nanofiber yarn was prepared using the process.
• Carbon nanofiber yarn (CNFY) was prepared as one-dimensional supercapacitor electrode.
• The CNFY electrode possessed high conductivity, large specific capacitance and perfect cyclic performance.

A facile spinning-based process was presented as a new method to fabricate continuous nanofiber yarn. In this process, a funnel-like nanofiber net with aligned structure was formed to collect nanofibers and the net was twisted and attenuated to the nanofiber yarn. The morphologies and structures of the prepared polyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofiber yarn and PAN-based carbon nanofiber yarn (CNFY) were examined. The PAN and carbon nanofibers were well aligned, with average diameters of 231 and 136 nm, respectively. The electrochemical properties of CNFY were studied. The results showed that CNFY possessed high conductivity, mass specific capacitance (15.8 Fg−1 at the current density of 2 Ag−1) and extremely excellent cycling performance at high current density (only 8.8% capacitance loss after 1200 cycles at a high rate of 2 Ag−1), which imply the potential application of CNFY as a novel electrode for supercapacitors.