With the arising of global climate change and resource shortage, in recent years, increased attention has been paid to environmentally friendly materials. Trees are sustainable and renewable materials, which give us shelter and oxygen and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Trees are a primary resource that human society depends upon every day, for example, homes, heating, furniture, and aircraft. Wood from trees gives us paper, cardboard, and medical supplies, thus impacting our homes, school, work, and play. All of the above-mentioned applications have been well developed over the past thousands of years. However, trees and wood have much more to offer us as advanced materials, impacting emerging high-tech fields, such as bioengineering, flexible electronics, and clean energy. Wood naturally has a hierarchical structure, composed of well-oriented microfibers and tracheids for water, ion, and oxygen transportation during metabolism. At higher magnification, the walls of fiber cells have an interes...

https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/pdf2016/fpl_2016_zhu001.pdf

Wood-Derived Materials for Green Electronics, Biological Devices, and Energy Applications.

Towards lignin-based functional materials in a sustainable world

Electrochemical energy storage devices are becoming increasingly more important for reducing fossil fuel energy consumption in transportation and for the widespread deployment of intermittent renewable energy. The applications of different energy storage devices in specific situations are all primarily reliant on the electrode materials, especially carbon materials. Biomass-derived carbon materials are receiving extensive attention as electrode materials for energy storage devices because of their tunable physical/chemical properties, environmental concern, and economic value. In this review, recent developments in the biomass-derived carbon materials and the properties controlling the mechanism behind their operation are presented and discussed. Moreover, progress on the applications of biomass-derived carbon materials as electrodes for energy storage devices is summarized, including electrochemical capacitors, lithium–sulfur batteries, lithium-ion batteries, and sodium-ion batteries. The effects of the pore structure, surface properties, and graphitic degree on the electrochemical performance are discussed in detail, which will guide further rational design of the biomass-derived carbon materials for energy storage devices.

Biomass derived carbon for energy storage devices

/pdf/review-practical-issues-and-future-perspective-for-na-ion-u9bye9ldv4.pdf

Review-Practical Issues and Future Perspective for Na-Ion Batteries

A review of carbon materials and their composites with alloy metals for sodium ion battery anodes

Lignin-based electrospun carbon nanofibrous webs as free-standing and binder-free electrodes for sodium ion batteries

The invention discloses a preparation method of a polyacrylonitrile/lignin carbon nanofiber electrode for a negative electrode of a sodium ion battery. The method comprises the steps of dissolving polyacrylonitrile and lignin into nitrogen, preparing nitrogen-dimethyl formamide into spinning dope, then spinning into fibers with fiber diameters being 100-500nm by an electrostatic spinning method, forming a thin film being 150-250 microns thick, performing pre-oxidization and carbonization on the thin film to obtain a polyacrylonitrile/lignin carbon nanofiber thin film which is 60-80 microns thick, and punching the thin film to obtain the negative electrode of the sodium ion battery. The preparation method has the advantages that the adopted lignin has the characteristics of no toxicity, no pollution, low cost and ready availability, so that the production cost of the electrode is lowered; the thin film can be directly punched into an electrode, so that non-active components of the electrode are reduced, and the electrode preparation process is simple. When used as the negative electrode of the sodium ion battery, the polyacrylonitrile/lignin carbon nanofiber electrode has extremely high high-current charge and discharge performance and stable circulating property.

Bao-jun Yu

Papers

Lignin-based electrospun carbon nanofibrous webs as free-standing and binder-free electrodes for sodium ion batteries

Preparation of polyacrylonitrile/lignin carbon nanofiber electrode for sodium ion battery