Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags are microchips with tiny radio antennas that could replace barcodes on consumer goods if they become cheap enough to mass-produce. Gyoujin Cho of South Korea's Sunchon National University and his colleagues have developed a low-cost process that prints RFID tags onto rolls of plastic film (pictured).
The film passes through three types of printer, which lay down the electrodes, antenna and other necessary electronic components. The key advance is the ability to print a tag that is powerful enough to be quickly activated and read by a standard RFID reader. The team estimates its per-unit production cost to be about US$0.03.
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Electronics: Caught on film. Nature 464, 10 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/464010d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/464010d
