Carbon materials are of fundamental importance in the fields of energy, electronics, and the environment. Using petroleum pitch has been proposed as a sustainable method to fabricate carbon fibers, yet the process requires further advancements due to an decrease in pores during post-treatment. Here we hypothesized that dissolving micro–nanobubbles of CO₂ in a pretreatment should favor the pore growth of carbon fibers during activation. Results show that when a swarm of CO₂ micro–nanobubbles is employed as the sacrificial catalyst, the samples display a specific surface of up to 792 m² g⁻¹. The high density of the CO₂ dissociated products caused the sample to include 70.71% micropores, thereby producing a disordered etching texture. The chemical state of the elements revealed that there were no marked impurities. This study provides a new strategy for the development of highly porous materials, that may possibly stimulate more research on advanced performance adsorbents or electrode materials.

碳材料在能源，电子和环境领域中至关重要。已经提出使用石油沥青作为制造碳纤维的可持续方法，但是由于后处理期间孔的减少，该方法需要进一步的发展。在这里，我们假设在预处理过程中溶解微纳米的CO ₂气泡应有利于活化过程中碳纤维的孔生长。结果表明，当使用大量的CO ₂纳米气泡作为牺牲催化剂时，样品的比表面积最高为792 m ²  g ^-1。高密度的CO ₂离解的产物导致样品包含70.71％的微孔，从而产生无序的蚀刻纹理。元素的化学状态表明没有明显的杂质。这项研究为开发高度多孔的材料提供了新的策略，这可能会刺激对高性能吸附剂或电极材料的更多研究。