Manufacturing ultra-high-frequency radio frequency identification tag antennas by multilayer printings

Abstract

In spite of the advantages of high throughput and a low manufacturing cost conferred by the gravure printing method, it has been shown that antennas printed using the gravure printing method do not offer satisfactory performance because of the limitations of the conductive materials used as ink. In this article, a roll-to-roll gravure-offset printing system is proposed for the manufacturing of printed ultra-high frequency radio frequency identification (RFID) tag antennas. Antennas printed using the multi-layer gravure-offset system are also demonstrated with their performances. The gravure-offset printing system mainly consists of three printing parts, i.e. drying units, vision systems, and register control systems for multi-layer printings. In the identification range test using an RFID reader, compared to the conventional RFID tags with copper-etched antennas, which show the identification range of about 3.2 m on average, the three-layer printed antennas with bonded tag chips exhibit the identification range of about 1.8 m on average (i.e. the performance of about 60 per cent of conventional copper-etched antennas), which implies that the printed antennas could be applicable to real fields.