Heat-treatment-assisted approach towards scalable synthesis of mesoporous carbons for high-performance lithium-sulfur battery

•Mesoporous carbon is prepared via scalable solvent-free nanocasting approach.•Heat-treatment-assisted mechanism was reported for mesoporous carbon synthesis.•The resulting mesoporous carbon presents a large mesopore size of ca. 12.4 nm.•Highly interconnected mesopore structure affords efficient immobilizing of sulfur.•The sulfur-carbon shows high capacity of 860 mA h g−1 at 0.5 C after 200 cycles.