RFID

Interest in Printed Electronics from major consumer brands worldwide is constantly increasing. A testimony to that is the ever-growing number of end-users presenting at the latest IDTechEx Printed Electronics conference this coming April, as well as the variety of industries they represent.

Find out the most exciting advances and applications in the new world of stretchable, invisible, morphable, tightly rollable, edible and other previously impossible electronics.

RFID sensors are commonly used to track a wide variety of items, from products in a supply chain to baggage at an airport. GE is developing sensors that combine RFID tracking with an acute gas sensing capability, which can detect the presence of potentially harmful chemical agents in the air. Because these sensors can be made at a size smaller than a penny, they can be part of a typical identification badge and serve as a pre-emptive or early warning sign for people regarding the presence of chemical agents in the air. Detecting chemical agents in this way could provide much more information about the relationship between a person's health and the environment in which a person lives.

At yesterday's International Solid State Circuit Conference (ISSCC), Holst Centre, Imec and TNO presented a dual-gate-based organic RFID chip with record data rate and lowest reported operating voltage.

Kovio and Nissan Chemical have announced a joint collaboration to scale up production of Kovio's silicon ink. In addition, Nissan Chemical is now working with leading display manufacturers to explore the use of high-performance and low-cost printed silicon electronics to manufacture TFT backplanes for displays.

A Portuguese university has developed Paper-e®, an emergent technology for applying field effect transistors on and with paper.

IDTechEx projects that the market for passive RFID tags will grow to over $10 billion in sales by 2019. Much of it will continue to use silicon chips. Dr Peter Harrop forecasts the Printed RFID market for 2010.

Novel research approach: Development of an overall "Organic Electronics" process to permit the industrial use of smart labels

Despite the world's largest RFID project, the $6 billion China National ID card scheme, being completed a year earlier, the global RFID market will rise by 5% this year to $5.56 billion.

Electronic tattoos applied to animals and meat employ FDA approved dyes that can be read with microwaves at a distance.

Produced via conventional printing processes, paper thin, flexible and at a cost level far below all known electronics: Printed electronics are expected to create a new era in electronics.

The legendary Holst Research Centre in Eindhoven Netherlands organised a Smart Packaging Workshop on July 3 for invited participants.

Speaking in Frankfurt this week, Division Manager Karsten Ries of Mekoprint Graphic Electronics said that his company has been printing mobile phone antennas, mobile phone speaker membranes, antennas in side view mirrors of cars and RFID antennas for many years.

Dr Peter Harrop, IDTechEx meets a few of the people working on printed electronics and allied matters at the historic University of Hong Kong.

Printed RFID tags have been one of the most important drivers of the new electronics.

Researchers performed tests on printed radio chips, produced from polymer circuits on thin, flexible polyester foil, for the first time in electronic ticketing and security.

Holst Centre - founded by the Belgian nanoelectronics research center IMEC and the Dutch research center TNO presented a 128 bit organic RFID transponder chip with Manchester encoding and anti-collision protocol.

This one day meeting organised by the Institute of Engineering and Technology and the Institute of Nanotechnology started with Professor Sir Richard Friend explaining the theory behind printed polymeric transistors, OLEDs and photovoltaics.

UPM Raflatac and Blue Spark Technologies partner to drive new battery assisted passive RFID research and product development

PolyIC presented the prototype of an air stable passive organic CMOS 4-bit RFID transponder for a carrier frequency of 13.56MHz.

The Muehlbauer Technology Group provides with the FCM 20000 the most efficient and highly flexible system for high volume RFID Smart Label strap production.

Mühlbauer has been selected to supply all necessary equipment for RFID inlay production, label converting and label insertion to exax Inc.

Muehlbauer Technology Group, an international and independent consultant and manufacturer of innovative solutions for the Semiconductor related products market, announces the market launch of its new high speed RFID inlay production system TAL 15000.

Mühlbauer Technology Group has launched the world's fastest and highly flexible RFID inlay production line TAL 20000.

PowerID Ltd., the industry leader in battery-assisted, passive (BAP) RFID technology, announced the availability of smaller, improved versions of its EPCglobal Class 1, Generation 2-compliant PowerG and PowerM BAP labels.

Dr Peter Harrop of IDTechEx gave a video interview and animations, concerning the future use of printed electronics in supermarkets.

Active RFID (where the tag has its own power supply) often has printed sensors and sometimes printed antennas. Unisys serves as the prime contractor and systems integrator for the RFID III DoD contract, bringing together the technologies of Hi-G-Tek and other solution providers.

OrganicID™ has successfully printed a simplified CMOS RFID device that includes much of the critical circuitry needed for an EPC-compatible device.

SOMARK Innovations, Inc. raised a round of venture capital financing, led by Finistere Ventures and T2 Venture Capital.

Printed RFID tags that could be cheap enough to use on consumable packaging to monitor temperature, store and transmit data may only be a year way claim scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute of Integrated Systems and Device Technology IISB in Erlangen.

A Swedish research centre has been established for intelligent pharmaceutical packaging, smart foods packaging, hospital logistics and patient care.

The world's first plastic diode operating in the Ultra-high frequency (UHF) band has been developed by IMEC (Belgium) and TNO (The Netherlands).

A neat "robot" terminal has just been announced by electronics giant NEC. It combines a touch-sensitive screen in its chest with an RFID reader terminal for gathering data from the e-money phones that are popular in Japan.

Kovio Inc., a privately held Silicon Valley company, announced this week the development of the world's first silicon ink based RFID and launch of its printed silicon RFID platform for item-level intelligence.

A unique combination of wireless technologies will allow the next generation of cell phones, PDAs, or wireless laptops to be used as readers for virtually any sensor application, ranging from glucose testing with a cell phone to remote temperature checking of an appliance in a secondary home, using a laptop.

At Europe's largest RFID conference, RFID Europe, in Cambridge UK 30th September - 1 October, the most impressive users, developers and suppliers of ruggedised and apparel RFID will present their new advances and view of the future.

While most investment in printed electronics has been by material companies, KURZ is one of the few printing companies that has invested significantly in the subject, bringing much needed printing expertise to the industry.

Scientists from Queen Mary, University of London are helping to perfect a technique used to catch serial killers, by testing it on bumblebees.

IDTechEx report on the SEMICON West event held in San Francisco in mid July - an event with over one thousand exhibitors covering the silicon supply chain.

Printed RFID is only part of an emerging $300 billion business in printing many forms of electronics and electrics.

Acquisition expands Impinj product portfolio and increases customer base

New antenna advances will be covered at RFID Europe later this year - presentations include Leonhard Kurz of Germany developers of printed RFID and other futuristic capabilities. You can also visit Conductive Inkjet Technology which has new antenna technology and Marshall Aerospace.

European researchers have taken a major step towards the goal of developing printable electronics that can be used for creating radio frequency identification tags and flexible watch displays.

Printed electronics is used in RFID to a steadily increasing extent as volumes start to exceed those met in any other form of electronics.

Currently, counterfeiting and the illegal distribution of many brand goods and other products continues throughout the world but now many countries and industries have introduced countermeasures using cutting-edge technologies.

Taking medication wrongly is a huge problem, resulting in more than 150,000 people dying unnecessarily in both North America and in Europe every year.

The big penetration of transport ticketing by the more reliable, faster and less easily defrauded RFID will only happen when it is entirely printed and costing under 5 cents per disposable ticket.

Printed electronics is evolving so fast that the full variety of benefits arising has yet to become clear.

3M uses balls with self levelling RFID tags in them for location and identity of gas and other pipelines in the USA - a similar function is now being performed in China.