New Opportunities for Printing Technology - RFID

I. Introduction

RF technology was first used in military operations for defense, and it has been developed so far. It can be used in various fields such as access control, anti-counterfeiting, theft, animal chips, and transportation, automatic control and warehousing, etc., and the scope of application is even wider in manufacturing, logistics, and medical care. , transportation, retail and other industries. Well-known manufacturers such as Wal-Mart, Baoshen, and Jinjeleil first introduced and used, and the US Department of Defense also announced that military product management will fully use RFID, and the Food and Drug Administration also announced that it will use RFID to monitor illegal drugs and products. Taiwan’s EAN began to use it three years ago. Started to promote RFID applications, combined with the production, government, academic and research industry experts to organize "RFID service group" and expand the promotion of industrial applications. At present, many companies have participated in service groups, one after another industry has joined in succession, hoping to grasp the standard development trend as soon as possible And business opportunities.

With respect to the application of RFID, after the establishment of the MITAuto ID Center in 1999, the circulation industry has considered fully introducing the application of the entire supply chain. In 2003, EAN and UCC jointly established EPC global to promote RFID/EPC global common standards. The commercial application of RFID can be officially taken off. However, the key to the success of RFID technology is not only antenna design, band standardization, and equipment. Apart from certification, the most important thing is the price of tags, and printing RFID antennas by printing is not only fast but also a good way to reduce costs. Applying printing to RFID is bound to become the future trend of the printing industry.

This article briefly discusses the relationship between RFID-related standards and the printing industry and RFID.

Second, RFID related standards

In order to achieve the global diffusion effect, RFID must have a unified specification and standard. EPC global officially announced the RFID standard EPC in 2003, including the design of the RFID data coding standard and the EPC Network mechanism. The goal is to establish a The global network connects computers to trillions of dollars of everyday electronics. The MIT Auto-ID Center unveiled the program at the opening of the Electronic Product Code (EPC) Symposium in Chicago and stated that it will provide radio frequency identification (RFID) products at seminars. The company provides detailed specifications and documentation for various radio frequency hardware and software interfaces. For the RFID standard, the following describes the RFID specifications, EPC network blocks and components, radio waves, etc. as follows:

(I) RFID specifications

In order to construct the EPC network mechanism, EPC global issued RFID-related specifications, which provide all system definitions and indicate the functional requirements of each subsystem. According to different network blocks, there are seven published version 1.0 of the specification. , In addition, the label data specification has been carried out to version 1.1, and the summary is explained as follows (see Table 1 for details):

(II) EPC Network Blocks and Components

The blocks to be constructed by the EPC network mainly include RFID tag boards, scanners, EPC data, Savant, object naming service system and EPC information system, which are respectively explained in the following (see Table 2 for details):

(c) Radio waves

In the aspect of radio waves, in order to avoid the use of different radio frequency standards in various countries, resulting in confusion and confusion in use, most internationally comply with the specifications of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). At present, there are six kinds of frequencies used by RFID, namely, 135 KHz or less, 13.56 MHz, 433.92 MHz, 860 M to 930 MHz (ie, UHF), 2.45 GHz, and 5.8 GHz. The following frequency standards have been issued for this Auto ID Center: UHF Class 0 uses 900MHz, Class 1 uses 860-930MHz, and High Frequency Class 1 uses 13.56MHz (as shown in Table 2). -4 item descriptions).

In order to realize the EPC network, a platform called "Internet Object" is further established. To this end, researchers have developed hardware and network software protocols - this network includes a special software package called Savant, which acts as a nervous system and is responsible for collecting and storing information transmitted by RF readers and acting accordingly. The Savant software then works with the Item Name Service System (ONS), which automatically boots the local computer to the Internet location containing the product information to be queried. The labeling information is written in Physical Markup Language (PML), which was developed by MIT. A form of program code based on the well-known Extensible Markup Language (XML), the entity markup language program code placed in a dedicated entity markup language server can be used as a standard to describe all physical objects, processes, and environments.

Third, the new opportunity for the printing industry

(I) RFID has great potential for development

According to the analysis of the ABI research market research organization, the RFID market will increase from 20 billion yuan to 75 billion yuan in the global RFID market from 2002 to 2008; the reader market will grow from 9.1 billion yuan per year. Yuan has increased to 33 billion yuan, and the market for software application systems has increased from 12.1 billion yuan to 30 billion yuan each year. The total output value of RFID has increased from 41 billion yuan to 138.2 billion yuan per year, and the compound annual growth rate (CAAG) is as high as 22 %, its development potential is quite alarming. But Michael Liard, senior analyst at RFID Research, a market research company at VDC (Venture Development Corporation), said: “One of the obstacles to the Wal-Mart RFID process is the high cost. The greatest benefit of RFID technology is to increase supply. Chain efficiency, but the cost of a single RFID tag is around 25 to 30 cents, and for most companies, the unit cost needs to be reduced to 5 cents or less, and the logistics cost savings brought by RFID can only be offset by the device cost. Director Xu Ming of the Center for Systems Research pointed out that Taiwan has a mature semiconductor manufacturing and packaging system and electronics production and assembly industry, and has established the ability to establish automation equipment. This overall environment is conducive to reducing costs and increasing production capacity of RFID. It also shows that Taiwan is A very suitable country for RFID development.

(B) The relationship between RFID and printing

After the standards have been set, the next step is how RFID will become popular. Cost issues have been one of the main obstacles to the spread of RFID. Printing is faster and cheaper than traditional copper etching methods. Therefore, the use of printing methods to print antennas onto RFID is an economical and efficient way. Some marketers of RFID have hoped that screen printing can make RFID antenna printing speed exceed 50,000-80,000 per hour. Meet the huge demand that comes with it. The biggest advantage of screen printing is that – as long as the difference between screens and templates is used, different ink materials can be used to print the required products, which means that the inks used can be very diverse, and most of them are for RFID. What helps is the so-called conductive ink. For printed materials, if printed, the antenna can be printed on a variety of label materials, including polyester, PVC, and even paper. In the process of printing the antenna, as long as the desired antenna shape is printed on the object to be printed as required, there is no need to destroy the object to be printed like the traditional etching method, which not only saves many costs, but also can reduce the chemical quantity. The waste and pollution further illustrate that printing can make the antenna itself more automatic. By combining other printing units and enhancing the label and microchip's automatic devices, the RFID manufacturing process can be made faster. .

Conductive inks play a very important role in printing RFID antennas. Usually such inks will include silver or carbon. In recent years, many manufacturers of RFID tags have been testing the feasibility of conductive polymer applications in printing. Typical conductive inks are those in which PTF pastes are formed using silver and carbon, and PTFs are most commonly found on printed circuit boards. Since the Silver PTF has a lower resistivity (Table 4), it is the best ink system for RFID tags and the PTF formed using copper, but due to the very fast oxidation of copper, it is not suitable for use in RFID.

Due to the above advantages in printing and the rapid development of RFID, printed RFID antennas will bring another wave of new business opportunities to the printing industry. The most obvious example is that RFID will replace the original bar code. Bar code labels were originally a major business branch of the packaging and printing industry. After RFID tags were used, printing had another new task - printing its antenna with conductive ink. Cost has always been a major obstacle in the promotion of RFID tags. At present, the cost of RFID tags is approximately between 3 cents and 6 cents per dollar. Of course, there is no problem for valuable products, but it is not feasible for low-priced products. , The use of conductive ink printed RFID tag antenna or line, not only high efficiency, but also an effective way to reduce costs, but also save a lot of copper corrosion liquid corrosion.

(III) Perspective of RFID Technology from Drupa 2004 Printing Exhibition

At this year's 2004 Drupa exhibition, printing machines incorporating a variety of manufacturing processes are making a comeback this year. From here, it can be seen that the mechanical structure of the printing press continues to improve, and RFID has also become one of the highlights of this exhibition. The American Flint Ink Company (Figure 1) has set up a development department for this business and has cooperated with the MIT auto-ID center to develop a global RFID data collection network. , establish contact. Flint Ink Company has compared lines printed on conductive ink with lines etched out of copper in various radio frequency bands. Such as 860 ~ 950MH UHF, 2.45GMHz microwave and 13.56MHz high frequency have been tested. Tests were also conducted on which type of printing technology was used, including plain printing, gravure printing, flexo printing, and screen printing. Recently, an exclusive agreement has been signed with RT circuit board companies using plain printed circuit technology. In addition, RFID-related presses include the Melzer ST-L400, the OCE VarioStream 6100, the MANROLAND R700..., among which are Melzer and RFID products, as well as RFID-based antenna machines (Figure 2) and VarioStream. The 6100 is suitable for high-quality RFID bar code printing. It shows RFID applications on the show floor. The most important is the use of LED laser imaging and flash fusion (Fig. 3). MANROLAND presents new RFID printing technology (fig. four).

IV. Conclusion

After RFID standards are set and costs are reduced, RFID will soon become a part of life, and its in-depth livelihood will be expected. For example, in the July 20th, 2004 China Evening News International News It has been reported: "Japanese schoolchildren will soon be equipped with a "smart card" that can identify and track functions. This smart card using "Radio Frequency Identification System (RFID)" technology can be used when students enter or leave school. Reading the machine records, the parents can grasp the situation of the children even if they are not beside their children.” Through such “smart card” parents can use the readers installed in the school gates and other locations to read the data of schoolchildren through the machine, then they can use the electronic E-mail or phone call to learn about the situation of school children attending school and classes in real time, which can greatly reduce the risk of children being kidnapped. In Taiwan, black heart television, black heart mattresses, and black heart copiers have frequently appeared in recent days. All buyers must be cautious when buying electricity. They are afraid to buy fakes or used goods. Zhang Ruixiong, a professor in the capital and engineering department, once said, "If we buy RFID chips on the items we sell, we may reduce the recycling of old products and then sell them as new products because they need to remove old RFID chips on old products." And embed the new RFID chip, if we control the serial number of the RFID chip and its distribution channels and channels, all the old products will not be hidden." If further use in the human body, Canada Zarlink Semiconductor company invented a new The wireless application, which studies the in-body antenna design for so-called body area networks, develops a series of human implanted medical components to help the elderly and the disabled. From the printing point of view, in the past few years, “bar code” has always been one of the largest businesses for packaging printing. Nowadays, the emergence of RFID brings about another revolution in printing, not only a breakthrough in technology, but also a test of the printing industry. Courage and creativity, because RFID's technology and application are more complex than barcodes, and the scope of standards involved is more extensive. Imagine that traditional bar codes that were not favored at the beginning are only after years of hard work and have achieved today's achievements. They have brought huge business opportunities to the printing industry. ,