Free-standing, welded mesoporous carbon nanofibers as anode for high-rate performance Li-ion batteries

A novel type of renewable lignin-based mesoporous carbonized nanofibers (MCNFs) has been fabricated via electrospinning technique and thermal treatment, using lignin with polyacrylonitrile (PAN) as the carbon source and triblock copolymer Pluronic P 123 as the template. The obtained MCNFs were directly used as anodes of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) without binder and current collector. The MCNFs anode exhibited a large reversible capacity of 384.4 mAh g− 1 at 20.0 mA g− 1 and maintain 177.7 mAh g− 1 at a current density of 1.0 A g− 1 after 400 cycles. Even at a fast (91 s) discharge condition, the MCNFs achieved a high discharge capacity of 127.7 mAh g− 1.