Porous Thermal Barriers for Safer, Fast‑Charging Battery Systems: Materials, Mechanisms, and Applications

Fast charging is quickly becoming a baseline expectation for electric vehicles and consumer electronics, but it also intensifies heat generation and raises the risk of thermal runaway. Conventional thermal management methods often focus on removing heat during normal operation, yet safety-critical events demand a different strategy: materials and structures that can delay, block, and control heat propagation long enough to prevent cascading failure. Porous thermal barriers—engineered foams, aerogels, porous ceramics, and composite architectures—offer a promising route by combining low thermal conductivity, tailored heat transfer pathways, and in some cases additional functions such as flame resistance, venting support, or mechanical protection.This Research Topic focuses on porous thermal barriers designed for safer, fast‑charging battery systems, spanning fundamental mechanisms through device-level validation. It welcomes contributions addressing materials design, characterization, modeling, and integration, with an emphasis on how porosity, microstructure, and interfaces govern thermal performance and safety outcomes in realistic battery environments. Areas of interest include:- Porous barrier materials and architectures: Aerogels, foams, porous ceramics, fiber networks, and hybrid composites; structure–property relationships and manufacturable designs.- Membrane/separator-based barriers: Porous separator membranes, ceramic-coated separators, and membrane-like interlayers/coatings engineered to delay heat propagation while maintaining electrical insulation and venting compatibility.- Thermal transport mechanisms: Conduction, convection, and radiation in porous media; interface resistance; anisotropic heat spreading and thermal switching concepts.- Safety under abuse and fast-charge conditions: Performance during overheating, nail penetration, crush, overcharge, and propagation scenarios; failure modes and mitigation strategies.- Multifunctional designs: Barriers that also provide flame suppression, gas management/venting compatibility, mechanical buffering, electrical insulation, or chemical stability.- Modeling and diagnostics: Multiphysics simulations, reduced-order models, and in situ/operando thermal measurements to link microstructure to pack-level behavior.- Manufacturing, scalability, and integration: Cost-aware fabrication routes, durability and aging, compatibility with cell formats and pack assembly, and validation in relevant prototypes.By bringing together materials science, thermal engineering, battery safety, and system integration, this Research Topic aims to clarify what porous thermal barriers can realistically deliver for fast‑charging batteries—and what design rules, test methods, and deployment pathways are needed to translate promising concepts into robust, scalable safety solutions. Topic editors: Abubakar Gambo Mohammed, Sheng Chen, Karem Elsayed Elfeky Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/77499/porous-thermal-barriers-for-safer-fast-charging-battery-systems-materials-mechanisms-and-applications