Microfibers of microporous carbon obtained from the pyrolysis of electrospun β-cyclodextrin/pyromellitic dianhydride nanosponges

Abstract Novel activated carbon materials are being constantly developed and applied in many research and industrial applications. The choice of the precursor represents a key step, to achieve satisfying resulting features in terms of surface development, structural features, carbon contents, and amount of ash. In this work, a novel carbon product has been obtained starting from an electrospun β-cyclodextrin/pyromellitic dianhydride linked nanosponge. After the pyrolysis, the polymeric mat resulted in carbon material still displaying fibrous morphology, characterized by a diameters distribution of 1.3 ± 0.5 μm. A peculiar granular microstructure was observed via FESEM, a 692 m 2 /g surface area and a 5–12 A pore size distribution, with pore volume of 0.14 cm 3 /g, resulted via BET characterization, while −32.8 ± 0.7 mV resulted after ζ potential analysis. These results confirmed β-cyclodextrin/PMDA-linked electrospun nanosponges as a suitable precursor for a novel carbon material preparation.