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Key Words:Iron compounds;Capacitance - Carbon - Electrodes - Electrolytic reduction - Oxygen - Phosphorus compounds - Supercapacitor - Transition metals

Abstract:Inspired by their distinctive properties, transition metal phosphides have gained immense attention as promising electrode materials for energy storage and conversion applications. The introduction of a safe and large-scale method of synthesizing a composite of these materials with carbon is of great significance in the fields of electrochemical and materials sciences. In the current effort, we successfully synthesize an iron phosphide/carbon (FeP/C) with a high specific surface area by the pyrolysis of the gel resulting from the hydrothermal treatment of an iron nitrate-phytic acid mixed solution. In comparison with the blank (P/C), the as-synthesized FeP/C appears to be an efficient electrode material for supercapacitor as well as oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) applications in an alkaline medium in a three-electrode system. In the study of supercapacitors, FeP/C shows areal capacitance of 313 mF cm^-2 at 1.2 mA cm^-2 while retaining 95% of its initial capacitance value after 10000 cycles, while in the ORR, the synthesized material exhibits high electrocatalytic activity with an onset potential of ca. 0.86 V vs. RHE through the preferred four-electron pathway and less than 6% H<inf>2</inf>O<inf>2</inf> production calculated in the potential range of 0.0-0.7 V vs. RHE. The stability is found to be better than those of the benchmark Pt/C (20 wt%) catalyst.<br/> © 2019 The Royal Society of Chemistry.

Volume:9

Issue:43

Translation or Not:no

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