Facile synthesis of cobalt phosphate electrode material for enhanced electrochemical supercapacitor applications

The present work demonstrates electrochemical performance of cobalt phosphate (CP) thin films prepared by chemical bath deposition technique. The prepared (CP) films are of monoclinic phase with highly preferred orientation along (240) plane. Morphology studies on the CP films with different concentration reveal nanospheres along with the growth of intermediate nanosheets. The electrode with 3.5 M cobalt concentration (CP3) offers more active sites and enhanced electrochemical performance as compared to the other two electrodes, viz, CP1 and CP2 which contain lower concentration of cobalt. The CP3 electrode shows maximum specific capacitance of 678 Fg −1 at a scan rate of 10 mVs −1 and 90.46% capacitive retention after 10,000 cycles. The impact of capacitive and diffusive contributions to the total capacity of the electrodes is studied by employing Trasatti and Dunn’s model. The results on the study of CP thin film electrodes establish their potential for the growing energy storage applications.