(202f) Electrospun Mesoporous Nanofiber As Battery Application

We fabricated a polymer/ceramic hybrid nanofiber by electrospinning poly acrylonitrile(PAN)/polysilsesquioxane (up to 70/30 weight % ratio) composite solution. By tuning the calcination condition, either well-ordered mesoporous silica or carbon nanofibers are produced from this electrospun hybrid nanofiber. Visual characterization using transmission electron microscopy(TEM) and the pore size distribution measured using the BET surface analyzer confirmed the presence of the mesoporous structures made. These mesoporous materials can provide extremely high pore density and facile ionic transportation, which are useful traits as battery electrodes. The mesoporous silica nanofiber, after reduction, can turn into mesoporous silicon nanofiber which has great potential in Li-Ion battery anode. The mesoporous carbon nanofiber, on the other hand, shows good promise as Li-Sulfur battery material. These materials exhibit higher performance as battery materials after highly-conductive carbon nanotubes (CNT) or graphene nanoribbons (GNR) are incoporated.