Engineers from the University of Glagow have developed a new wireless tag system capable of identifying objects and measuring temperature without the use of microchips, a development that researchers say could help to reduce the environmental impact caused by single-use RFID technologies.
The tags instead use inexpensive coils and a sensing material made from a form of silicon rubber called PDMS and carbon fibres. The coils, which are smaller than those found in credit cards, absorb electromagnetic signals from a handheld reader using electromagnetic waves.
Researchers have said that these new tags could help to reduce the retail industry’s reliance on RFID chips, with approximately more than 10 billion tags used each year. Most tags are used once and end up in a landfill.
The new tags are able to carry information as well as taking real-time measurements of temperature. The tags can be read by wireless handheld devices.
The tags could help to create future ‘smart packaging’ which could measure parameters such as pH or humidity, and provide retailers with warnings when food is going to spoil or carrying harmful bacteria.
In a paper published in the journal ‘Advanced Science’, the researchers discussed how they developed the technology and tested it in lab conditions. The sensors could detect variations in temperatures between 20°C and 110°C, which could help make future wireless sensors cheaper and more sustainable, as fewer devices will now be required to cover the same temperature sensing range.
The tags and performed particularly well between 20°C to 60°C, the range most relevant for food safety and medical applications. They are capable of reacting quickly to changes in temperature, taking just seconds to register significant changes.
Multiple tags can also be read at once, showing three sensors providing information to the reader device simultaneously and function at different distances from the reader.
“Developing wireless sensing tags is crucial for monitoring temperature across supply chains, particularly in food safety and medical applications. By eliminating the need for microchips, these chipless tags could significantly reduce both cost and electronic waste compared to traditional RFID sensors,” said Dr Mahmoud Wagih, lecturer at the University of Glasgow’s James Watt School of Engineering and the study’s corresponding author. “While there have been various efforts in recent years to develop chipless smart devices, many require expensive specialised equipment for readout, limiting their potential in commercial applications.
“Our paper shows how multiple temperature sensors can be read simultaneously using an inexpensive portable device, which could make it an attractive prospect for adoption by a wide range of industries.”
“The new technology we’ve developed uses materials which are cheap and widely-available, and the tags can be manufactured using a simple, scalable process. Our hope is that those unique characteristics could help the technology become widely-adopted in the years to come, helping to reduce the environmental harms currently being caused by single-use RFID tags,” added Dr Benjamin King from the James Watt School of Engineering and co-author of the paper.
There’s plenty of other editorial on our sister site, Electronic Specifier! Or you can always join in the conversation by commenting below or visiting our LinkedIn page.
