Animal Silk-Derived Amorphous Carbon Fibers for Electricity Generation and Solar Steam Evaporation

Abstract

Animal silk-derived carbon materials are of interest to various applications, such as smart cloth and wearable sensors. However, it remains a challenge to massively transform silks into continuous carbon fibers. In this work, carbon fibers based on two kinds of animal silks, i.e., Bombyx mori (B. mori) silk and Antheraea pernyi (A. pernyi) silk, are prepared by using a large-scale-capable one-step heating process without any additives or activation process. These carbon fibers and yarns are electroconductive and mechanically robust. To expand the application of these carbonized silks, we further weaved them with cotton yarns to obtain composite fabrics with different textures and evaluated their performance for solar steam evaporation. Our results confirmed that the advantages of these composite fabrics in light absorption, large surface area, and hierarchical liquid transport channels allowed them to be used as a solar steam generation for desalination and sewage treatment. In addition, we reported that these conductive carbon fibers could be assembled into fluidic nanogenerators to generate electricity from the water flow. This work is expected to guide a large-scale preparation and use of animal silk-derived amorphous carbon fibers.