The Project SMARTAGS aims to study the application of some technologies belonging to the field of Organic Electronics, to make tags for the monitoring of physical measurable variables, used in several product types and different situations.
Large_Description
The Project SMARTAGS aims to study the application of some technologies belonging to the field of Organic Electronics, to make tags for the monitoring of physical measurable variables, used in several product types and different situations. SMARTAGS keeps a common approach for all research lines, consisting of the integration of organic materials able to react to stimuli from the external world (temperature, vapours, etc..), with traditional electronic boards, in order to obtain the full involvement of SMEs from the Italian Convergence Regions. In other words, we want to seek for a sustainable innovation for the industrial partners. Nevertheless, the demonstrators will be original, and can be considered as "forerunner-applications". The "forerunner-applications" will be the benchmark to gather and focus the efforts of the partners, but they are able to give new opportunities and diversification from the start-up concepts, with the possibility to build up on them a portfolio of intellectual property for further developments. The "forerunner-applications" will be devoted to the monitoring of physical measurable variables on different scenarios: • food packaging, • industrial processing, • quality of the environment, • control of crops. The variety of the systems assembled for the four "forerunner-applications", is based on different materials to be integrated with the organic sensitive materials: polyester substrates, paper, silicon chips. As the expected markets for them is expected to be relevant, there is areal issue to identify from the early beginning the routes for the selection of safe materials, and to arrange device design methods that are suitable for recycling ("design for recycling"). Therefore, the evaluation of the environmental sustainability of the selected products, will be carried out for all the different demonstrators of the Project. All the devices under study are wireless, therefore analysis of the communication methods and standards and the possible interference in their real operation will be carried onoThe project will not study the fabrication of completely organic tags, that are studied worldwide in many best-equipped public and private laboratories; we decide to pursue the integration of common RFID chips and RFID tags on polyester, with other components provided by the materials and technologies or Organic Electronics. The experiments also deal with the organic materials that are best suited for the coupling of tags with the external world (polymers and organics to measure temperature, vapours, etc.), and with the building block of Organic Electronics, as the Organic Thin Film Transistors (OTFf), to build up simple coupling blocks with traditional electronic boards, and possibly with power supply sources. The technological tools already available, to direct print such materials (inkjet method) to emboss polymers materials to fabricate materials, antennas, etc. ("hot embossing") will be further equipped to allow to the industrial partners the access to a development laboratory for the preliminary tests and familiarization with the fabrication methods of the tags of interest, and start together the analysis of the final cost of the products.