Flexo Printing with Conductive Ink (Printed Electronics Europe 2005)

 

Current finished tag prices for Passive UHF tags are still ranging from 20 to 75 cents and that's still a long way away from the price points necessary for widespread adoption. A recent study published in 2004 predicts that the price of RFID tags may only drop to 16 cents by 2008. Others feel that the nickel tag is achievable and may be on the horizon in less than 4 years. One of the core components of an RFID tag is the antenna and this may turn out to be one of the costliest components of the whole solution.

 

The antenna cost, attachment and tag assembly, as opposed to chip manufacture will be the key issues inhibiting supply-side increases in production volume and the economies of scale necessary to drive the price down. This presentation will address RFID UHF antenna printing with waterbased silver flexographic inks as a cost effective alternative to etched copper, screen printing, aluminum stamping or electroplating methods of creating an antenna.

 

Key points include:

James Neilson holds an Honours Business Administration degree from Wilfrid Laurier University, a program based on the Harvard Business School's curriculum. He is the former owner of Canada's first Internet Coffeehouse, The Help Wanted Cafe and the former VP Finance of a rapidly growing Canadian retail chain, Promised Land Imports, that increased in size fourfold under his guidance. He has several years experience in recruiting high technology sales and development professionals in Toronto and Ottawa through his own company, the IT Ronin Group. James brings a proven record of helping to grow small companies into larger ventures. He has worked with Xink laboratories and its parent company Information Mediary Corporation since inception.

XINK's Instacure™ advanced conductive and resistive flexographic and gravure formulations allow printing of complex electronic circuitry for Intelligent and Active Packaging (IAP) applications, including flexible paper sensors (package security), sensor grids (pharmaceutical smart packaging), keypads (electronic paper diaries, access cards), and UHF RFID antennas.