Introduction - Analog Organic Electronics - page 9

Fig. 1.3 Photograph of an RFID tag for theft prevention. The coil antenna is clearly visible
OLED displays generate light themselves. OLED displays offer the advantage of a
wide viewing angle and ultra-high contrast.
1.4.2 RFID Tags
The concept of radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags is widespread in logistics
and theft prevention. They are attached to an object and contain information about it.
In fact, they are an alternative to bar codes that enables to put more information about
the product on the tag. This information could specify the status, e.g. sold or not, or
the model of the object, e.g. a serial number, and can be sent through an antenna to
an RFID reader. Today's price of an RFID tag is between 0.05 and 0.2. A familiar
example of an RFID tag for theft prevention is shown in Fig. 1.3 . The largest part of
the tag is a coil which functions as an antenna.
Since organic electronics technology is fabricated on a low-cost foil and has the
property that it can be printed at large-scale, it meets the requirements of RFID tag
applications. The area required for the foil is available at a very low cost and the full
circuit can be integrated at once on the foil. This is expected to further reduce the
cost per tag which is the driving force in every commercial application. Research
on organic RFID tags on foil has been performed and digital RFID cores have been
presented (Cantatore et al. 2007 ;Mynyetal. 2011 , 2012 ).