According to the company, this was achieved by using a printed radio-frequency identifier (RFID) it developed employing a high-performance semi-conductive carbon nanotube composite.
Toray said that this technique demonstrates the potential for manufacturing UHF RFIDs by using low-cost printing processes to streamline retail and logistics operations including: automating cash registers and efficient inventory management. The company said that it is now looking to accelerate development to commercialise these printed RFIDs.
Conventional silicon RFID tags are costly to produce as they use existing, and expensive, integrated circuit (IC) chips. As they are made with complex processes employing high temperatures and vacuum environment, costly IC chip mounting processes are also needed.
In response, Toray has driven efforts to manufacture low-cost ICs and mounting process-free printed semiconductors, such as organic semiconductors. The challenges, however, have been around mobility - with a range of just 20 cm2/Vs.
Toray has focused its research efforts on printed materials, focusing on high-performance carbon nanotube composites. The semiconductor unveiled is able to deliver a mobility of 182 cm2/Vs - believed to be a new world record.
While thin film transistors (TFTs) are either p-type (positively charged) or n-type (negatively charged), carbon nanotubes are normally p-type. Toray has employed proprietary material technology to develop an n-type feature, realising both p- and n-type TFTs that would be necessary to form power-saving, low-cost ICs.
The company fabricated an RFID prototype incorporating a 24-bit memory with a low-cost printing technology by adopting this new material and proprietary device and process technologies and has been able to communicate wirelessly with UHF waves, becoming the first printed UHF RFID.
Toray has said that its product goal is to materialize a 60-bit memory. By popularizing its new low-cost coated RFIDs in retailing and logistics, it is looking to promote product data collection and sharing, dramatically enhancing overall supply chain efficiency.
