New electronic tag could challenge single-use RFID tags

The new wireless tag system can identify objects and measure temperature without the use of microchips.

Instead, the tags use inexpensive coils and a sensing material made from a form of silicon rubber (PDMS) and carbon fibres. The coils are smaller than the ones found in credit cards and absorb electromagnetic signals from a hand-held reader using electromagnetic waves. The team’s findings are detailed in Advanced Science.

In a statement, co-author Dr Benjamin King from Glasgow’s James Watt School of Engineering, said: “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.”

The researchers said their new tags could help reduce the retail sector’s reliance on RFID chips, which uses more than 10 billion tags each year. A tag’s combination of paper, plastic, silicon and metal makes them challenging to recycle, which is why they end up in landfill.