(607d) Printed RFID Tags: Materials, Processes, and Devices

Printed electronics has been an area of intensive research for the last several years. This has primarily been driven by a substantial reduction in price per unit area that is expected to result from the use of printing as a replacement technology for the lithography, etching, etc., used in conventional electronics fabrication. One of the most intriguing applications of printed electronics is as an enabling technology for the realization of ultra-low-cost RFID-based barcode replacement tags. By fabricating simple RF barcode circuits using printing, it is expected that it may be possible to realize such circuits at a net cost of <2 cents, thus enabling their deployment in such applications as anti-counterfeiting, authentication, and product inventory management.

To realize a printed electronic barcode, it is necessary to realize printed inductors, capacitors, transistors and diodes. This necessitates the development of printed conductors, dielectrics, and semiconductors, as well as their integration into functional devices with adequate performance. We will review our development of printable conductors based on nanoparticles, printable polymer dielectrics, and printable organic semiconductors. By optimization of materials and printing processes, we have successfully realized printed electronic devices with performance levels suitable for some basic RFID applications; here, we review the state of the art in our printed electronics technology and discuss the implications of the same on future smart tagging applications.