Passive RFID Tags For Food Packaging?

Not the first place you would expect the latest news from the bar coding industry but Dutch researchers have developed a smart radio frequency identification (RFID) chip that is small enough to be placed on flexible food packaging.

If this technology progresses we will soon see the end of best before dates and the product actually telling you how fresh it is. This technology could be used to allow 4th generation mobile phones the ability to speak directly to the product and be told all the information about its freshness and where it has come from.

Could this be the end of the traditional barcode?

This passive RFID tag technology could be inexpensively mass-produced and and we could be seeing it replace the humble barcode.

Several organisations are involved in the thin-film RFID tag development programme including the Holst Centre, Evonik and Polyic.

Passive RFID Tags

In the past, RFID tags have been made from silicon which was never going to be developed further for the food packaging market due to the extremely high cost to produce them.

As a Imec representative explained

The ‘reader-talks-first-communication' element is this technology's real breakthrough. Previously, RFID tags operated on the principle of the tag talking first - transmitting data following the application of an RFID reader's radio frequency field. This process can sometimes generate conflict, with multiple tags all trying to stream data to one particular reader simultaneously and while, in response, anti-collision systems have been developed to try and counter this issue, there are limitations to their use.

"When the RFID reader first powers and contacts the tag, it transmits a clock and identification data", Imec's Paul Heremans stated in a company press release. "The tag then uses this data and clock to determine when to send its code. This mechanism for the first time allows implementing a practical anti-collision scheme for thin-film RFID tags."

Consumer Packaging Tags
Passive RFID tags are already widely used by various industries including large courier companies and manufacturers to track their products through the production life cycle.

an Imec representative explained

"Item-level tagging could allow vendors to implement automatic billing and inventory management", he said. "On top of these applications, such RFID tags could be integrated with sensors for smart RFID tags. In this way, they could be integrated into food packaging to provide customers with information on freshness or characteristics of this product."

Imagine no longer having to count stock individually but knowing exactly how many products you have on the shelf or if any are out of date with just the wave of a wand (or mobile phone).