Abstract: With the continuous development of lithium-ion batteries and other new energy batteries in the power/energy storage field, traditional commercial polyolefin separators can no longer meet the development needs of high-performance lithium batteries due to the disadvantages of poor wettability, ion selectivity, and low porosity. In recent years, scholars have done a lot of research on improving the ionic conductivity of separators. However, during the charging and discharging process of lithium batteries, only cations can transport to participate in the redox reaction. Lithium ions in binary electrolytes are usually surrounded by solvent molecules to form a larger solvent sheath, which causes the mobility of anions to be stronger than that of lithium ions. The low cation transmission efficiency inside the battery leads to problems such as concentration polarization and lithium dendrites in the battery, which limits the application of the battery at high rates. Therefore, the design of a new type of battery separator that inhibits the shuttle of anions and promotes the rapid migration of cations has excellent development prospects in improving the electrochemical performance of the battery. Starting from recent research hotspots, this article mainly introduces the development of new separators based on the improvement of cation migration ability in the battery field from the functional design of groups, the trapping effect of Lewis acid, and spatial screening. Finally, it concludes that the battery separator field exists challenges and future development directions.