Advanced mat-2013-Carbon Fiber Aerogel Made from Raw Cotton.pdf

5916 www.advmat.de www.MaterialsV C O M M U N IC A TI O N Carbon Fiber Aerogel Made from Raw Cotton: A Novel, Effi cient and Recyclable Sorbent for Oils and Organic Solvents Hengchang Bi , Zongyou Yin , Xiehong Cao , Xiao Xie , Chaoliang Tan , Xiao Huang , Bo Chen , Fangtao Chen , Qingling Yang , Xinyang Bu , Xuehong Lu , Litao Sun ,* and Hua Zhang * In order to solve the environmental and ecological problems in the earth arising from the increasing pollution from the crude oil, petroleum products and toxic organic solvents, it is urgent to develop an economic and feasible strategy. [ 1–4 ] Although many conventional methods such as combustion, the use of oil booms or oil skimmer vessels, [ 2 ] and sorbents such as expanded perlite, [ 5 ] zeolites [ 6 ] and activated carbon, [ 7 ] have been devel- oped to solve the aforementioned problems, they either show poor effi ciency or may introduce other types of contamination during the cleanup procedure. [ 2,5–11 ] Carbon-based three-dimensional (3D) networks with out- standing properties, such as low density, high electrical con- ductivity, high porosity, large specifi c surface area and chemical inertness, have been extensively investigated and shown much potential in catalyst supports, supercapacitors, gas sensors and so on. [ 12–15 ] In particular, their low density, high porosity and hydrophobic properties make them attractive candidates for the removal of pollutants and the separation of oil and water. Gen- erally, there are three types of carbon-based 3D frameworks, including organic aerogels pyrolyzed in an inert atmosphere, [ 16,17 ] sponges of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) or their derivatives fabri- cated by chemical vapor deposition (CVD), [ 18,19 ] and graphene- based aerogels from self-gelation. [ 4,20,21 ] However, the organic aerogels are fragile and dense in weight, and thus are not effec- tive in oil absorption. [ 16,17 ] In addition, the preparation of CNT- bas