In current times, CO2 capture and light-weight energy storage are receiving significant attention and will be vital functions in next-generation materials. Porous carbonaceous materials have great potential in these areas, whereas most of the developed carbon materials still have significant limitations, such as non-renewable resources, complex and costly processing or the absence of tailorable structure. In this study, a new strategy is developed for using the currently under-utilized lignin and cellulose nanofibers, which can be extracted from renewable resources to produce high-performance multifunctional carbon aerogels with a tailorable, anisotropic pore structure. Both the macro- and microstructure of the carbon aerogels can be simultaneously controlled by discreetly tuning the weight ratio of lignin to cellulose nanofibers in the carbon aerogel precursors, which considerably influences their final porosity and surface area. The designed carbon aerogels demonstrate excellent performance in both CO2 capture and capacitive energy storage, and the best results exhibit a CO2 adsorption capacity of 5.23 mmol g-1 at 273 K and 100 kPa, and a specific electrical double layer capacitance of 124 F g-1 at a current density of 0.2 A g-1, indicating that they have great future potential in the relevant applications.
Validerad;2020;Nivå 2;2020-02-24 (alebob)