B-trees are self-balancing tree data structures that keep data ordered and allow for efficient searching, insertion, and deletion operations. They improve performance for large data sets by minimizing disk accesses. Key characteristics of B-trees include being balanced, with all leaf nodes at the same level; self-balancing on insertions and deletions; and storing multiple keys per node. B-trees support efficient searching, insertion, and deletion in O(log n) time and are commonly used in databases, file systems, and other applications that require fast access to large amounts of ordered data.