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 10 000 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
2
O
2
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.