-
-
News
News Highlights
- Books
Featured Books
- smt007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueWhat's Your Sweet Spot?
Are you in a niche that’s growing or shrinking? Is it time to reassess and refocus? We spotlight companies thriving by redefining or reinforcing their niche. What are their insights?
Moving Forward With Confidence
In this issue, we focus on sales and quoting, workforce training, new IPC leadership in the U.S. and Canada, the effects of tariffs, CFX standards, and much more—all designed to provide perspective as you move through the cloud bank of today's shifting economic market.
Intelligent Test and Inspection
Are you ready to explore the cutting-edge advancements shaping the electronics manufacturing industry? The May 2025 issue of SMT007 Magazine is packed with insights, innovations, and expert perspectives that you won’t want to miss.
- Articles
- Columns
- Links
- Media kit
||| MENU - smt007 Magazine
The Rise of Structural Electronics
January 13, 2015 | Dr Peter Harrop, IDTechExEstimated reading time: 1 minute

Structural electronics (SE) is one of the most important technological developments of this century. It forms a key part of the dream, first formulated 30 years ago, of computing disappearing into the fabric of society. It also addresses, in a particularly elegant manner, the dream of Edison in 1880 that electricity should be made where it is needed. SE is often biomimetic: It usefully imitates nature in ways not previously feasible. An example of this is providing an aircraft or a car something resembling a human nervous system. The new IDTechEx report, Structural Electronics 2015–2025, sees this market climbing strongly to nearly $90 billion by 2025, with the aerospace and automotive sectors particularly important adopters.
Structural electronics effectively takes no space because it is integrated into something already there, achieving this by adding little if any weight increase to the integrated structure. However, the design rules change as we move from component selection and circuit design to functional design.
Structural electronics involves electronic and/or electrical components and circuits that act as load-bearing, protective structures, replacing dumb structures such as vehicle bodies or conformally placed upon them. The common factor is that both load-bearing and smart skin formats occupy only unwanted space. The electronics and electrics effectively have no volume. Initially, SE is seen as vital in tackling certain global problems in certain applicational sectors.
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the January 2015 issue of SMT Magazine.