As the next-generation renewable energy-storage technology
at the
grid scale, potassium-ion batteries demonstrate huge advantages when
carbonaceous materials are adopted as K-storage anodes due to their
low cost, environmental friendliness, and broad theoretical and practical
basis in lithium-ion batteries. However, such kinds of anode materials
still suffer from low capacity and severe volume change during the
K-storage process. Herein, an approach based on a molecular-scale
in situ porous design is proposed to develop carbonaceous electrodes
with uniform pores and defective structures. K+ could move
rapidly in the bulk electrode along with mitigated volume expansion
owing to the abundant channel structure. Moreover, the discharge capacity
of the porous hard carbon electrode increases significantly because
of the defect structure in the carbon layer. As a consequence, the
developed porous hard carbon electrode can maintain a high capacity
of 151.9 mAh/g after 2500 cycles at 1 A/g with an average capacity
decay rate per cycle of just 0.008%. These excellent K-storage properties
can be attributed to the molecular-scale-derived porous structure
and defects with increased carbon layer spacing.