Amorphous carbon shows great potential as an anode material for high-performance potassium-ion batteries; however, its abundant defects or micropores generally capture K ions, thus resulting in high irreversible capacity with low initial Coulombic efficiency (ICE) and limited practical application. Herein, pore engineering via a facile self-etching strategy is applied to achieve mesoporous carbon (meso-C) nanowires with interconnected framework. Abundant and evenly distributed mesopores could provide short K⁺ pathways for its rapid diffusion. Compared to microporous carbon with highly disordered structure, the meso-C with Zn-catalyzed short-range ordered structure enables more K⁺ to reversibly intercalate into the graphitic layers. Consequently, the meso-C shows an increased capacity by ~ 100 mAh g⁻¹ at 0.1 A g⁻¹, and the capacity retention is 70.7% after 1000 cycles at 1 A g⁻¹. Multiple in/ex situ characterizations reveal the reversible structural changes during the charging/discharging process. Particularly, benefiting from the mesoporous structure with reduced specific surface area by 31.5 times and less defects, the meso-C generates less irreversible capacity with high ICE up to 76.7%, one of the best reported values so far. This work provides a new perspective that mesopores engineering can effectively accelerate K⁺ diffusion and enhance K⁺ adsorption/intercalation storage.

非晶碳作为高性能钾离子电池的负极材料具有巨大的潜力。然而，其丰富的缺陷或微孔通常会捕获K离子，因此导致高不可逆容量和较低的初始库仑效率（ICE），并且实际应用受到限制。本文中，通过简便的自蚀刻策略进行孔工程，以实现具有互连框架的中孔碳（meso-C）纳米线。丰富且均匀分布的中孔可以为其快速扩散提供短的K ⁺途径。与具有高度无序结构的微孔碳相比，具有锌催化的短程有序结构的介孔碳可实现更多的K ⁺可逆地插入石墨层。因此，介观C在0.1 A g ^-1下显示出约100 mAh g ^-1的增加的容量，并且在1 A g ^-1下经过1000次循环后容量保持率为70.7％。多种原位/异位表征揭示了在充电/放电过程中可逆的结构变化。特别是，得益于介孔结构，其比表面积减少了31.5倍，缺陷更少，meso-C产生的不可逆容量更小，ICE高达76.7％，是迄今为止报道的最好值之一。这项工作提供了一个新的观点，即中孔工程可以有效地加速K ^+的扩散并增强K ^+的吸附/嵌入存储。