Chip-free wireless tag is proven to be more sustainable and is shown to help cut e-waste

Engineers from the University of Glasgow, recently spoke about a new wireless tag which is groundbreaking and innovative within the e-waste industry. This tag is able to identify objects, as well as measure temperature and it is able to do this without the need to rely on integrated circuits.

This paper in which they spoke about it was called, ‘Large-Area Conductor-Loaded PDMS Flexible Composites for Wireless and Chipless Electromagnetic Multiplexed Temperature Sensors.’

The tag is manufactured out of inexpensive coils and it includes a sensing material which is made out of a form of silicon rubber which is called PDMS. The final component of these tags is carbon fibres and along with all of this, tiny coils, which are similar, but smaller, to those which are found in credit cards, are able to absorb electromagnetic signals from a hand-held reader.

Not only can these wireless tags be ready by low-cost hand-held wireless readers, but they also have the capacity to store ID information and take real-time temperature readings. On top of this, they are also able to find applications measuring pH or humidity within next-generation packaging, which allows them to provide advance warnings when food is at risk and could spoil, or is outside of safe environmental conditions. Furthermore, it could also be possible for these tags to include healthcare and smart clothing, meaning it could monitor vital signs, whilst remaining unobtrusive.

A final benefit of these tags, is that multiple tags can be read at once and the scientists mentioned that, the tag involves three sensors providing information to the reader device all at the same time. Plus, the wireless tags are able to function equally well at different distances from the reader.

All of this research has been supported by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and the Royal Society.

It has been suggested that these new, innovative and less wasteful tags have the potential to help reduce the retail sector’s reliance on RFID chips, which currently utilises over ten billion tags on an annual basis. Normally these tags are single-use and then they end up in landfill.

Lecturer at the University of Glasgow’s James Watt School of Engineering and the study’s corresponding author, Dr Mahmoud Wagih, stated, “Developing wireless sensing tags is crucial for monitoring temperature across supply chains, particularly in food safety and medical applications. By eliminating the need for microchips, these chipless tags could significantly reduce both cost and electronic waste compared to traditional RFID sensors. While there have been various efforts in recent years to develop chipless smart devices, many require expensive specialised equipment for readout, limiting their potential in commercial applications. Our paper shows how multiple temperature sensors can be read simultaneously using an inexpensive portable device, which could make it an attractive prospect for adoption by a wide range of industries.”

James Watt School of Engineering and co-author of the paper, Dr Benjamin King, mentioned, “The new technology we’ve developed uses materials which are cheap and widely-available, and the tags can be manufactured using a simple, scalable process. Our hope is that those unique characteristics could help the technology become widely-adopted in the years to come, helping to reduce the environmental harms currently being caused by single-use RFID tags.”