Weakly solvating electrolytes for next-generation lithium batteries: design principles and recent advances

Lithium batteries play a dominant role in the power source market of electric vehicles and portable electronic devices. The electrolyte is critical to determining the performance of lithium batteries. Conventional electrolytes cannot meet the ever-growing demands of fast-charging, wide-temperature operation, and safety properties of lithium batteries. Despite the great success of (localized) high-concentration electrolytes, they still suffer from disadvantages like low ionic conductivity and high cost. The emerging weakly solvating electrolytes, also known as low-solvating electrolytes, offer another solution to these challenges and have attracted intensive research interests in recent years. This contribution reviews the working mechanisms, design principles, and recent advances in developing weakly solvating electrolytes. A summary and perspective about future research directions in this field is also provided. The insights will benefit both academic and industrial communities in designing safe and high-performance next-generation Li batteries.