fantastic plastic » RFID

MaDriX: Alliance project for printed electronics launched

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:49:47 +0000

“PolyIC, BASF, Evonik Industries, Elantas Beck and Siemens have announced the launch of a new German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)-sponsored alliance project called MaDriX to advance the development of high-performance printable Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. [...]

PolyIC leads the consortium engaged in the three-year joint project. The total investment sum amounts to some €15 million, with the BMBF contributing approximately €8 million. The project is funded as part of the BMBF’s 5th Framework Program “Key Technologies – Research for Innovations, Communications Technology Sector.” The German Aerospace Center, DLR, is acting as project sponsor. With MaDriX, the companies involved in the alliance and the federal ministry will secure Germany’s current leadership as a research base in the printable electronics sector. [...]

The close cooperation between the companies involved is a key to the success of the MaDriX project. PolyIC engages with the issues of component characterization, process development and setting up demonstrators. BASF, Evonik Industries and Elantas Beck will supply new materials to produce semiconductors and insulators for use in electronic circuits. Siemens is developing new real-time visual print inspection processes for quality control in the printing process. A number of universities and research institutes are also involved in the MaDriX project.”

PolyIC: first printed RFID and smart objects for the market

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:30:07 +0000

PolyIC, “The chip printers”, are announcing two product lines: PolyID® (RFID) and PolyLogo® (with additional display function).

Applications of products from the PolyID® and PolyLogo® lines will be presented at OEC [Organic Electronics Conference] 2007. PolyIC presents applications in the fields of brand protection, voucher systems, marketing, and logistics.

Within the PRISMA (Printed Smart Labels) project, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and has PolyIC as its consortium manager, all tickets to the Organic Electronics Conference will have a PolyID® tag attached to them. The tickets will be evaluated with a radio frequency reader at 13.56 MHz. This ticketing field test is being coordinated by Bartsch GmbH.

The steady progress en route to products at PolyIC can also be seen with the results in the laboratory. Thus, 32- and 64-bit RFID chips have been produced in the clean room. This success shows that the production of RFID chips with more memory capacity on the basis of the polymer semiconductor polythiophene is possible.

ORFID and BASF team up to develop printable organic electronics

Thu, 06 Jul 2006 22:53:54 +0000

ORFID Corporation [...] has signed an agreement with BASF Future Business GmbH (BFB), a subsidiary of BASF Aktiengesellschaft, to collaborate on the development and commercialization of printable organic electronic devices for use in display backplanes, RFID tags and other next generation electronic products.
Under the agreement, BFB will provide organic materials, materials expertise and financial resources for the development and commercialization of printable electronics. ORFID will build certain organic devices and develop processes for printing and testing the devices.

ORFID’s technology is based on research by Prof. Yang Yang’s group at UCLA: using a Vertical Organic Field Effect Transistor (VOFET) structure allows ORFID to fabricate TFTs with very short channel lengths (and thus high on-currents), without the need for high-resolution patterning methods.

ORFID has developed a breakthrough in organic electronics, called the VOFET (Vertical Organic Field Effect Transistor). Due to its unique architecture and use of conductive polymers (plastics that conduct electricity) in its fabrication, the VOFET offers performance characteristics similar to conventional, wafer-based silicon transistors, but can be produced at significantly lower cost, while offering other important advantages. Using organic materials, the VOFET can be manufactured using low-cost printing techniques. ORFID’s goal, and that of electronics manufacturers around the world, is to enable the production of a new generation of ultra-thin, light-weight and flexible electronic products, such as displays and “smart packaging” that incorporates printed RFID tags.

[press release]

Organic electronics market forecasts

Fri, 05 May 2006 21:51:51 +0000

NanoMarkets predictions for the OLED and e-paper, smart packaging, and thin-film photovoltaics industries:

Markets for OLED and Paper-Like Displays to Total $10.2 Billion by 2011:

combined sales of OLED displays and paper-like displays will reach $10.2 billion by 2011 and then go on to reach $14.7 billion by 2013.
shelf-edge displays will be the biggest opportunity for the paper-like display business in the next few years, generating $1.2 billion in annual revenues by 2011.
OLED televisions will reach $2.2 billion in revenues in 2011
by 2011, flexible displays will account for $1.7 billion in revenues.

Smart Packaging Market to Reach $4.8 billion by 2011:

The global smart packaging market will grow to $4.8 billion in 2011 and reach $14.1 billion in 2013
Smart packaging will account for over $1.1 billion in printable electronics components by 2011 growing to $4.2 billion in 2013
Smart packaging will also consume $1.1 billion in printable and chip-based RFID tags by 2011

Thin Film and Organic Photovoltaic Market To Reach $2.3 Billion ($US) in 2011:

Integrated building and construction products such as PV enabled roofing and window materials are projected to be the largest market opportunity measuring $800 million ($US) in 2011 with large project and consumer electronic products the second and third largest market opportunities.
On the materials front, amorphous silicon, the best established of the various thin-film PV materials, will represent an $800 million ($US) opportunity followed by organic and hybrid organic/inorganic materials and then CIS/CIGS.
Thin film/organic PV is also generating buzz in the industry and several companies have received large VC rounds. Major multinationals are also supporting this technology as Honda has announced it will soon start full-scale production of thin film PV and Shell has just sold off its conventional PV business to focus on thin film. On the other hand, NanoMarkets points out that thin film and organic PV is also a technology space that has received its fair share of hype and controversy with competing claims by different manufacturers on where and how it can be applied and disputes over conversion efficiencies and costs per watt.

European Commission announces RFID tag study

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 20:59:18 +0000

From the BBC:

The aim of the consultation exercise is to gauge reactions to RFID by both businesses and citizens in Europe.
Viviane Reding, the EU commissioner behind the exercise, warned that wider use of RFID would not be allowed to undermine the fundamental liberties that European citizens enjoy.

According to Vint Cerf, one of the “founding fathers of the Internet” and Google’s “Chief Internet Evangelist“,

“RFID could solve the mystery of missing socks and that’s a very important contribution to society,” said Mr Cerf.
As a more serious example, Mr Cerf said RFID tags could be used in hospitals to label medicines to ensure that drugs were used before they expired and, in conjunction with tags worn by patients, could make sure the right treatment was administered.

Regarding privacy issues:

Malcolm Crompton, former federal privacy commissioner for Australia and now a consultant on RFID issues, said it was important that safeguards for personal data were built into any laws governing the use of the tags. [...]
For instance, said Mr Crompton, standards could mandate the use of RFID in the form of a tag that a person could snap in half so that it could no longer pass on information.

Printing the Electronic Future

Tue, 28 Feb 2006 20:47:55 +0000

This article at IDTechEx talks about the decline of the traditional printing industry, and new markets in the field of printed electronics.

Are the ink makers, machinery suppliers and others variously specialising in flexo, litho, ink jet, screen, gravure and other technologies looking like the steam engine experts of one hundred years ago? The answer is probably not. Certainly there is a fascinating escape route opening up for some. It is the printing of electronics.

Apart from cost savings, printing electronics enables the fabrication of new (flexible) devices and easier integration of components (e.g. displays, batteries, antennas, resistors, …).

Printed electronics will kick the silicon chip out of the talking gift card as well as the discrete components and wires to which it is attached. But that is the least of what it will do. The film Minority Report showed it giving us the moving colour display and voice over on the cornflake packet. Interactive games on disposable paper packaging have already been demonstrated in real life but more serious uses will also drive printed electronics forward.

The following table lists some of the companies involved in the printing of functional devices (Source IDTechEx)

In most of these cases we are talking about many passes of very different new inks such as fine silver conductors, ceramic dielectrics, copper doped phosphors, and both organic and inorganic semiconductors and passivation layers. Low temperature curing, better definition, thinner layers and continuity are among the challenges. However, well over ten billion such constructions, mostly on polyester film or paper, have already been sold and the potential goes all the way up to ten trillion barcodes being replaced with printed chipless RFID every year. Yes, the barcode replacements will mainly be printed directly onto things – the money will not stretch to labels in those volumes.Below is the IDTechEx projection for the global market for RFID in 2016 in billions of dollars with the impact of printing technology

Partly printed tags for items $4.4 billion

Fully printed tags for items $1.1billion

Partly printed tags for other uses $3.55 billion

Tags without printing, for other uses $1.8 billion

Philips demonstrates first 13.56-MHz RFID tag using organic electronics

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 08:57:06 +0000

Philips has now realized the first plastic-electronics-based tag that is capable of transmitting multi-bit digital identification codes at 13.56 MHz â€“ the dominant industry-standard radio frequency for RFID tag applications. As an additional demonstrator for the technology, scientists at Philips Research have also developed a 64-bit code generator, showing the practicality of building plastic electronic circuits with the complexity required for item-level tagging.
Performance results for these circuits will be presented at this yearâ€™s International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC, February 5-9, San Francisco, CA, USA) in a paper that will also be awarded the conferenceâ€™s Beatrice Winner Award for Editorial Excellence.

The work was partly conducted in the frame of the PoliTag (funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research) and PolyApply (6th European Framework Programme) projects.

Tesco Gillette RFID trial – privacy concerns

Mon, 27 Sep 2004 15:14:03 +0000

In January 2003 Tesco and Wal-Mart announced plans to install ’smart shelves’ to keep track of sales of RFID-tagged Gillette Mach3 razor blades.
The Tesco trial in Cambridge, UK was met with criticism, especially after the US based Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy and Invasion and Numbering revealed in July 2003 that anyone taking a pack of blades from the shelf had their picture taken.
The shelf disappeared soon after and it appears that Tesco is limiting the use of RFIDs to the less controversial tagging of whole pallets and cases, for the time being.