Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), central to modern energy storage systems, are widely used in portable electronics, electric vehicles (EVs), and grid storage because of their high energy density and long cycle life. However, growing technological demands expose the limitations of current LIBs under extreme conditions, including performance degradation, reduced cycle life, and insufficient safety and reliability. Overcoming these challenges requires transformative manufacturing strategies to redesign batteries from the atomic scale to the macroscopic scale. Extreme manufacturing, utilizing unconventional processes and extreme environmental conditions, provides a new pathway for designing and producing next-generation high-performance LIBs. This perspective bridges the energy and manufacturing fields, outlining key challenges and future directions in this interdisciplinary domain. It defines core pathways through five interconnected themes: extreme working conditions, dimensional control, fabrication techniques, structural design, and performance optimization. Specifically, the perspective explores how extreme fabrication techniques realize material dimensional control to enhance interface properties and electrochemical performance, how electrode structural design enables stable operation at higher performance limits, and how intelligence-driven optimization processes vast amounts of data to build intelligent systems, accelerating material development, enabling smart production monitoring, and facilitating full-cycle battery health management. Through the lens of extreme manufacturing, this perspective provides a structured framework for developing next-generation LIBs.

The development of robust anode-electrolyte interfaces (AEI) with enhanced compatibility and mechanical strength is critical for regulating zinc-ion nucleation kinetics, suppressing dendrite formation, and advancing zinc-ion battery commercialization. To address persistent interface degradation during battery cycling, we propose a novel manufacturing strategy utilizing digital-light-processing (DLP) 3D printing. This approach enables programmable regulation of gel-polymer electrolyte (GPE) structures through layer-by-layer photopolymerization, achieving precision regulation of macro-microstructures and interfacial stresses. The DLP-manufactured GPEs feature cross-scale structures combining dense porous networks with smooth surface topography, providing abundant electrochemical active sites and stable interfacial contact. Multiphase-field simulations integrated with in-situ/ex-situ characterizations reveal stress-enhanced zinc deposition mechanisms, where optimized interfacial stress eliminates AEI contact instability, ensuring rapid mass transfer between electrode and electrolyte. Under regulated interface stress, the symmetrical cell demonstrates stability exceeding 2000 hours, and the full cell retains 91.72% capacity after 8000 ultralong cycles, with reliable operation under extreme temperature conditions (−10 ℃/60 ℃). The precise regulation of interfacial stresses establishes stable AEI configurations, demonstrating a transformative approach to durable zinc-ion battery design.

Printed micro-supercapacitors (MSCs) have shown broad prospect in flexible and wearable electronics. Most of previous studies focused on printing the electrochemically active materials paying less attention to other key components like current collectors and electrolytes. This study presents an all-printing strategy to fabricate in-plane flexible and substrate-free MSCs with hierarchical encapsulation. This new type of “all-in-one” MSC is constructed by encapsulating the in-plane interdigital current collectors and electrodes within the polyvinyl-alcohol-based hydrogel electrolyte via sequential printing. The bottom electrolyte layer of this fully printed MSCs helps protect the device from the limitation of conventional substrate, showing excellent flexibility. The MSCs maintain a high capacitance retention of 96.84% even in a completely folded state. An optimal electrochemical performance can be achieved by providing ample and shorter transport paths for ions. The MSCs using commercial activated carbon as the active material are endowed with a high specific areal capacitance of 1892.90 mF cm⁻² at a current density of 0.3 mA cm⁻², and an outstanding volumetric energy density of 9.20 mWh cm⁻³ at a volumetric power density of 6.89 mW cm⁻³. For demonstration, a thermo-hygrometer is stably powered by five MSCs which are connected in series and wrapped onto a glass rod. This low-cost and versatile all-printing strategy is believed to diversify the application fields of MSCs with high capacitance and excellent flexibility.

The lithium-sulfur (Li-S) battery with an ultrahigh theoretical energy density has emerged as a promising rechargeable battery system. However, the practical applications of Li-S batteries are severely plagued by the sluggish reaction kinetics of sulfur species and notorious shuttling of soluble lithium polysulfides (LiPSs) intermediates that result in low sulfur utilization. The introduction of functional layers on separators has been considered as an effective strategy to improve the sulfur utilization in Li-S batteries by achieving effective regulation of LiPSs. Herein, a promising self-assembly strategy is proposed to achieve the low-cost fabrication of hollow and hierarchically porous Fe₃O₄ nanospheres (p-Fe₃O₄-NSs) assembled by numerous extremely-small primary nanocrystals as building blocks. The rationally-designed p-Fe₃O₄-NSs are utilized as a multifunctional layer on the separator with highly efficient trapping and conversion features toward LiPSs. Results demonstrate that the nanostructured p-Fe₃O₄-NSs provide chemical adsorption toward LiPSs and kinetically promote the mutual transformation between LiPSs and Li₂S₂/Li₂S during cycling, thus inhibiting the LiPSs shuttling and boosting the redox reaction kinetics via a chemisorption-catalytic conversion mechanism. The enhanced wettability of the p-Fe₃O₄-NSs-based separator with the electrolyte enables fast transportation of lithium ions. Benefitting from these alluring properties, the functionalized separator with p-Fe₃O₄-NSs endows the battery with an admirable rate performance of 877 mAh g⁻¹ at 2 C, an ultra-durable cycling performance of up to 2176 cycles at 1 C, and a promising areal capacity of 4.55 mAh cm⁻² under high-sulfur-loading and lean-electrolyte conditions (4.29 mg cm⁻², electrolyte/ratio: 8 µl mg⁻¹). This study will offer fresh insights on the rational design and low-cost fabrication of multifunctional separator to strengthen electrochemical reaction kinetics by regulating LiPSs conversion for developing efficient and long-life Li-S batteries.