Large-scale production of Cu3P nanocrystals for ultrahigh-rate supercapacitor

Abstract

The fast development of supercapacitors inspires a growing interest in inexpensive super-capacitive electrode material with high performance. Herein, we develop a Rone step method for preparing Cu3P nanocrystals by direct low-temperature phosphorization treatment of commercial copper powder. As a super-capacitive electrode material, for the first time, Cu3P nanocrystals exhibit outstanding electrochemical rate performance (318.5 F g−1 at 400 mV s−1; 169.2 F g−1 at 50 A g−1) and excellent cycling stability with no loss of specific capacitance at 10 A g−1 for 10,000 cycles. The presented synthesis method opens up a facile and large-scale approach to explore high-performance and low-cost Cu3P electrodes for supercapacitors.