Electrospun poly(acrylonitrile-co-itaconic acid) as a porous carbon precursor for high performance supercapacitor: study of the porosity induced by in situ porogen activity of itaconic acid

An acrylonitrile based copolymer, poly(acrylonitrile-co-itaconic acid), P(AN-co-IA) was synthesized with different amounts of itaconic acid (IA) to study in situ porogen activity of IA to produce porous carbon nanofibers (CNFs) without any subsequent physical or chemical activation. The concept developed here avoids unnecessary and complex extra activation steps when fabricating CNFs which ultimately lead to lower char yields and uncontrollable pore sizes. The ability of COOH in P(AN-co-IA) to act as an in situ porogen by releasing CO2 during carbonization was verified by simultaneous thermogravimetric analysis-mass spectrometry compared to polyacrylonitrile (PAN). The specific surface area of PAN CNFs (27 m(2)g(-1)) dramatically increases to 1427 m(2)g(-1) upon addition of similar to 8 wt% IA without any ex situ activation. Furthermore, we confirmed that the porosity could be tuned by changing the IA content. The best electrochemical performance was obtained from the copolymer containing similar to 8 wt% of IA, which gives a maximum specific capacitance of similar to 93 F g(-1) at a scan rate of 10 mV s(-1) and energy density of similar to 46 Wh kg(-1) at 1 A g(-1) without any subsequent physical or chemical activation.