Synthesis and Electrochemical Properties of Coral-Like LiFePO4 Particles as Supercapacitor Electrodes

Facile synthesis of materials with high specific surface areas is very urgent for their potential applications in the field of energy storage. In the present work, coral-like LiFePO4 particles etched for 60, 90, and 120 min (labeled as S-60, S-90, and S-120, respectively) were successfully synthesized through a facile chemical etching method with rugby-like LiFePO4 (named as LFP) particles as precursors synthesized by the solvothermal method. They were then applied as electrode materials for high-performance electrochemical capacitors. In particular, the specific surface area of S-120 reaches 52 m(2) g(-1), which is 5.2 times greater than that of unetched counterpart. Therefore, S-120 can achieve a higher capacitance of 359 F g(-1) at a scan rate of 2 mV s(-1) compared with the unetched counterpart. Furthermore, S-120 presents a good cycling stability of 82.3% capacitive retention even after 2000 cycles, which is much higher than that of unetched LFP particles (64%). As a result, the coral-like LFP particles are promising candidate electrode materials for supercapacitor applications. (c) 2017 The Electrochemical Society.