One-pot preparation of one-dimensional hierarchically porous carbon@SnO2 nanocomposites for flexible fabric-based supercapacitor electrodes

The design of functional energy storage materials with superior performances has become the focus topic with the growing energy crisis in recent years. Herein, porous carbon nanofibers@tin dioxide (PCNFs@SnO ₂ ) composites are prepared by one-pot electrospinning and followed by carbonization. The PCNFs@SnO ₂ possesses a hierarchically porous structure containing mesopores and micropores. The specific surface area is as high as ∼ 559.4 m ² g ⁻¹ , and the total pore volume can reach 0.28 cm ³ g ⁻¹ . Meanwhile, the nonwoven fabric surface is coated with a silver layer through the screen printing technique to obtain silver-coated nonwoven fabric (SNF). Importantly, PCNFs@SnO ₂ and SNF are combined to obtain flexible fabric-based functional materials. As a primary energy application, the prepared PCNFs@SnO ₂/SNF electrode has a high mass specific capacitance of 583.1 F g ⁻¹ at 1 A g ⁻¹, a high area specific capacitance of 933 mF cm ⁻² at 1 mA cm ⁻², and a good rate capability (70 % at 10 A g ⁻¹ ). The supercapacitor device with two PCNFs@SnO ₂ /SNF electrodes also shows outstanding cycling durability, capacitor retention is as high as ∼ 91.52 %, after 10000 charging/discharging cycles. In brief, our study may provide an innovative route for designing hierarchically porous one-dimensional carbon nanocomposites for supercapacitors with high performances.