Structural designs toward performance-balanced multifunctional batteries

Electric energy has propelled the development of clean transportation, intelligent buildings, and smart cities, while the diversification of application scenarios has put forward new requirements for its features. Therefore, the multifunctional batteries developed through structural design and integrated optimization have garnered significant interest due to their superior performance and good adaptability. Nevertheless, achieving a balance between battery performance and functionality continues to pose a challenge. This review examines structural design strategies for battery cells and systems to attain diverse functionality. The advanced materials and corresponding processing technologies employed in structural design have been summarized to provide feasible approaches. Subsequently, the representative architectures and corresponding characteristics of functional unit cells—involving microbatteries, deformable batteries, all-in-one batteries, and structural batteries—are thoroughly discussed based on classic cases. Attractively, a series of design principles have been proposed for the packaging and large-format integration of multifunctional batteries. Finally, the challenges and future prospects of multifunctional batteries, along with their design strategies, are discussed, culminating in a four-stage development road map.