One dimensional (1D) nanostructures such as fibrous materials receives recent attention due to their unique physicochemical properties. A wide range of fabrication techniques have been used for the fabrication of fibrous nanomaterials, among them electrospinning has been found to be an efficient technique for the fabrication of various types of fibre nanostructures using polymeric solutions as precursors [218]. The fabrication of carbon nanofibres from lignin through electrospinning has three steps and they are (i) electrospinning of lignin fibres, (ii) thermal stabilization of lignin fibres and (iii) carbonization of thermo-stabilized lignin fibres [219]. Normally, lignin exhibits poor viscoelastic properties, which creates a lot of challenges during the electrospinning process. This can be overcome by blending the lignin with other kind of synthetic polymers such poly(ethylene oxide) [220]. Figure 9 shows the electrospun lignin fibre as the precursor for the fabrication of carbon nanofibres. Dallmeyer et al. [221] investigated seven different technical lignins (isolated lignin) for the fabrication of fibrous network. None of the lignins were able to be spun into fibres without a binding polymer such as PEO. In addition to PEO, utilization of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) as binding polymer was reported by Seo et al. for the fabrication of lignin-based carbon fibres [222]. The physicochem­ical properties and the morphology of lignin-based carbon nanofibres can be varied by manipulating the experimental parameters. Lallave et al. [219] reported the fabrication of various types of (filled and hollow) carbon nanofibers from Alcell lignins by coaxial electro­spinning. Uniqueness of their process is the successful electrospinning of lignin without binder

polymer. Recently, Spender et al. [223] reported the rapid freezing process for the fabrication of lignin fibres with nano dimension.