Reviewing recent progress of liquid electrolyte chemistry for mitigating thermal runaway in lithium‒ion batteries

In the past few decades, rapidly advanced lithium‒ion batteries (LIBs) technologies have revolutionized our lives by powering portable electronic devices and transportation tools. But surged risks pertaining thermal runaway (TR) of LIBs have brought adverse concerns for their further applications, especially in grid‒scale energy storage. As the blood of LIBs, electrolytes serve as the "initiator and accelerator" of substance‒energy conversion reactions triggering TR. Therefore, executing the functionalized design for electrolytes to cut off these reactions has been recognized as a critical solution to mitigate TR. However, due to the lack of clarifying intricate relationship between mentioned reactions and TR, the targeted design of functional liquid electrolytes (LEs) is difficult in making effective progress. Herein, this review, for the first time, analyzes the affiliation‒mechanisms, while summarizing achieved progress in functional LEs to enhance LIB safety. Meanwhile, the review puts forward the design principles of functional LEs to aiming at each type of unfavorable substance‒energy conversion reactions.