Recent Development of Thermal Insulating Materials for Li-Ion Batteries

As one of the core components of electric vehicles, Li-ion batteries (LIBs) have attracted intensive attention due to their high energy density and good long-term cycling stability. However, some abuse conditions inevitably occur during battery operation, resulting in safety accidents such as the thermal runaway (TR) of LIBs. Therefore, the efficient and appropriate thermal insulation material design is crucial for LIB packs to effectively reduce or even inhibit the spread of TR. Based on it, in this review, we present the principle and influences of TR to provide the necessity of battery thermal management and thermal insulating materials. Then, we deeply discuss and compare the two kinds of representative thermal insulating materials: phase change thermal insulating materials and barrier-type thermal insulating materials. Their properties, synthesis methods, and modification means are investigated to provide some guidance for the future application of high-performance thermal insulating materials in the field of LIBs.