Tailoring MoTe₂/C Heterostructures With Dual Regulation of Porosity and Carbon Content for High‐Rate and Long‐Cycling Potassium‐Ion Storage

Molybdenum telluride (MoTe2) with expanded interlayer spacing facilitates rapid K⁺ insertion/extraction, enabling potassium ion batteries (PIBs) to be a potential anode material of great prospect. However, significant volume expansion and sluggish K⁺ diffusion limit its electrochemical performance. To overcome these challenges, we developed MoTe2/C composites with a unique flower-globular morphology by precisely tuning the chelation ratio between Mo and dopamine. Among the synthesized materials, MoTe2/C-11, featuring a 36.3% moderate carbon content and an optimized pore size distribution (4-10 nm), exhibits outstanding rate performance (108 mAh g-1 at 5 A g-1) and exceptional cycling stability, retaining 93.6% of its capacity after 3000 cycles at 3 A g-1. Of particular significance is the discovery that the relationship between carbon content and pore structure in the material is a key factor for achieving high-performance batteries. The resulting improvement in electrochemical kinetics is analyzed, and the dynamic mechanisms involved in potassium storage are examined. This study underscores the critical role of chelation engineering in optimizing anode materials and offers a scalable strategy for developing next-generation high-performance PIBs and other alkali metal-based energy storage systems.