The development of high-value products from lignocelullosic materials as lignin, which is the second most abundant carbon feedstock and an important co-product in many lignocellulosic biomass-derived industries, could suppose a significant opportunity to reduce their costs and environmental impacts. Lignin is an attractive raw material for "waste-refinery" or "biorrefinery" [1], and its high aromaticity makes it suitable to be used as precursor of carbon materials. Carbon fibers (CFs) have many advantages over granular carbon and pellets, and show good flexibility, density, high surface area and, in some cases, excellent electrical conductivity [2]. In fact, as a continuous material, the conductivity of the fiber is much higher than the conductivity of grains obtained from the same precursor [3]. These properties make CFs one of the best conformations of carbon for electrochemical applications. Despite CFs can be prepared by different ways, the electrospinning method easily allows to obtaining a binderless carbon electrode from a precursor solution [3]. In addition to the good structural characteristics of CFs, by this method, it is possible to obtain a uniform dispersion of a metal throughout the fibers, in a single step, yielding a carbon fiber with metallic platinum after suitable thermal stabilization and carbonization stages [4]. In this work, we present a straightforward method to obtaining, in a single step, CFs with good structural properties and very well dispersed platinum nanoparticles and P surface groups by electrospinning, to be used as binderless electrodes for different applications.
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