A new opportunity for printing technology - RFID
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First, Introduction
RF technology was first used in defense and military operations. It has been developed to date in various fields such as access control, anti-counterfeiting, theft, animal chips, and transportation and automatic control storage. The scope of application is more extensive in manufacturing, logistics, and medical care. , transportation, retail and other industries. Well-known manufacturers such as Wal-Mart, Bao-alka and Jinjilie are first introduced, and the US Department of Defense also announced that military management will fully adopt RFID. The Food and Drug Administration has also announced that it will use RFID to monitor illegal drugs and products. Taiwan EAN was three years ago. We began to promote RFID applications, and combined with industry, government, academic, and research industry experts to organize "RFID service groups" to expand and promote industrial applications. At present, many enterprises have joined the service group, and there are successively joined the industry, hoping to grasp the standard development trend as soon as possible. And business opportunities.
In the application of RFID, after the establishment of the MIT Auto ID Center in 1999, the circulation industry was considered to fully introduce the application of the entire supply chain. In 2003, EAN and UCC jointly established EPC global to promote the universal standard of RFID/EPC. The commercial application of RFID can be said to be officially taken off. However, the key to the success of RFID technology is the design of antenna, the standardization of the band, and the equipment. In addition to certification, the most important thing is the price of the tag. Printing the RFID antenna in a printed manner is not only a fast and 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 RFID-related standards and the relationship between the printing industry and RFID.
Second, RFID related standards
In order to achieve the effect of global popularization, RFID must have uniform specifications and standards. EPC global officially announced the standard EPC of RFID in 2003, including the design of RFID data coding standard and EPC Network mechanism. The goal is to set up a A global network that connects computers to hundreds of trillions of everyday electronics. The MIT Auto-ID Center, at the opening of the Electronic Product Code (EPC) workshop in Chicago, announced the plan to provide radio frequency identification (RFID) products at the seminar. The vendor provides detailed specifications and documentation on the hardware and software interfaces for various wireless frequencies. For the RFID standard, the following describes the RFID specification, EPC network blocks and components, radio waves, etc. as follows:
(1) RFID specification
In order to construct the EPC network mechanism, EPC global has released RFID-related specifications, which provide all system definitions and explain the necessary functional requirements of each subsystem; according to different network blocks, there are seven published specification versions 1.0. In addition, the volume label data specification has been carried out to version 1.1, and the summary is as follows (see Table 1 for details):
(2) EPC network blocks and components
The blocks to be constructed by the EPC network mainly include RFID tag cards, scanners, EPC data, Savant, object naming service system and EPC information system, which are explained below (see Table 2 for details):
(3) Radio waves
In terms of radio waves, in order to avoid the confusion of the use of radio frequency in various countries, the confusion and troubles in use are caused, and most of the international standards are in compliance with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). At present, there are six kinds of frequencies used by RFID, which are below 135KHz, 13.56MHz, 433.92MHz, 860M~930MHz (ie UHF), 2.45GHz and 5.8GHz. For this Auto ID Center released the following frequency standards: UHF level 0 (Class 0) uses 900MHz, Class 1 (Class 1) uses 860-930MHz, high-frequency level 1 uses 13.56MHz (such as <Table 1> 2 -4 descriptions are shown).
In order to implement the EPC network, a platform called "Internet Object" is further established. To this end, the researchers developed a hardware and network software protocol – a network that includes a dedicated software package called Savant, which acts as a nervous system to collect and store information from RF readers and act accordingly. The Savant software then works with the Item Name Service (ONS), which automatically directs the local computer to the Internet location containing the product information to be queried, while the tag information is written in Entity Markup Language (PML), which was developed by MIT. A form of program code, based on the well-known Extensible Markup Language (XML), which is used as a standard for describing all objects, processes, and environments.
Third, the new opportunity of the printing industry
(1) RFID has great development potential
According to the analysis of ABI research market research institutes, the global RFID market will increase from 20 billion yuan to 75 billion yuan per year from 2002 to 2008; the market for interpretation machines will be 9.1 billion yuan per year. The yuan has increased to 33 billion yuan, and the market size of software application systems has increased from 12.1 billion yuan per year to 30 billion yuan per year. The total output value of RFID has increased from 41 billion yuan per year to 136.8 billion yuan per year. The annual compound growth rate (CAAG) is as high as 22 %, its development potential is quite amazing. But Michael Liard, a senior analyst with RFID technology at VDC (Venture Development Corporation), another market research company, said: "One of the obstacles hindering the Wal-Mart RFID process is the high cost. The biggest benefit of RFID technology is to improve supply. Chain efficiency. But the cost of a single RFID tag is around 25 to 30 cents. For most companies, the unit cost needs to be reduced to 5 cents or less. The logistics cost savings brought by RFID can be offset by the cost of the device. Director Xu Ming of the Research Institute System Center pointed out that Taiwan has a mature semiconductor manufacturing and packaging system and an electronic production assembly industry, and has established the ability to develop automation equipment. This overall environment is conducive to RFID to reduce costs and increase production capacity. It also shows that Taiwan is A country that is well suited for RFID development.
(2) The relationship between RFID and printing
After the standard is set, the next step is how RFID will be popularized. Because cost has always been one of the main reasons hindering the popularity of RFID, printing is faster and cheaper than traditional copper corrosion. Therefore, it is economical and efficient to print the antenna onto the RFID by printing. Some RFID market suppliers expect that the screen printing can make the RFID antenna print speed more than 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 mesh is different from the template, different ink materials can be used to print the desired product, which means that the ink used can be very diverse, and the most What is helpful is the so-called conductive ink. In the case of printed materials, if printed, the antenna can be printed on a variety of label materials, including polyester, PVC or even paper. In the process of printing the antenna, as long as the required antenna shape is printed on the printed matter as needed, it is not necessary to destroy the printed matter itself as in the conventional etching method, which not only saves a lot of cost, but also reduces chemistry. Waste and pollution, further explanation, printing can make the manufacture of the antenna itself more automated, using other printing units, strengthen the label and microchip automatic device, so that the RFID manufacturing process can be made faster .
Conductive inks play a very important role in the printing of RFID antennas. Usually such inks will include silver or carbon. In recent years, manufacturers of RFID tags have been testing the feasibility of conductive polymer applications for printing. A typical conductive ink is a type of PTF pastes formed from silver and carbon, and PTF is most commonly found on printed circuit boards. Due to the lower resistivity of the Silver PTF (Table 4), it is the best ink system for RFID tags, and the PTF formed by copper. However, because copper is very fast, it is not suitable for use. On RFID.
Due to the above advantages of printing, coupled with the rapid development of RFID, printing RFID antennas will bring another new business opportunities to the printing industry. The most obvious example is that RFID will replace the original barcode. The bar code label was originally a major business branch of the packaging printing industry. After adopting the RFID tag, printing has 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 between US$3 and US$6 per dollar. Of course, there is no problem for valuable goods, but it will not work for low-priced goods. The use of conductive ink to print the RFID tag antenna or circuit, not only high efficiency, but also an effective way to reduce costs, but also reduce the pollution of a large amount of copper and corrosive liquid.
(3) Insight into RFID technology from Drupa 2004 printing exhibition
In this 2004 Drupa exhibition, the printing presses combined with various processes will shine in this year. From here, we can see that the mechanical structure of the printing press continues to improve. Among them, RFID has become one of the highlights of this exhibition, such as Flint Ink Inc. (Figure 1) has set up a development department for this business and has partnered with MIT's auto-ID center to develop a global RFID data collection network. , establish a relationship. Flint Ink has compared the lines printed with conductive inks to the copper-etched lines in a variety of RF bands. For example, ultra-high frequency of 860~950MH, microwave of 2.45GMHz and high frequency of 13.56MHz have been tested. It also tested which printing technology was used, including lithography, gravure, flexo, screen printing and so on. Recently, an exclusive agreement has been signed with R.T. Circuit Board Company for lithography. In addition, RFID-related presses include the Melzer ST-L400, OCE VarioStream 6100, MANROLAND R700..., which combines Melzer with RFID products, and RFID antennas (Figure 2), VarioStream The 6100 is suitable for high-quality RFID barcode printing. In the exhibition, there are RFID applications, most of which are LED laser imaging, flash fusion (Figure 3) and MANROLAND show new RFID printing technology (Figure 3) four).
Fourth, the conclusion
After the standardization and cost reduction of RFID, RFID is about to become a part of life, and its part of people's livelihood will be expected, for example, in the international news of the July 20, 2004 evening news. It has been reported that "children in Japan are about to be equipped with a "smart card" with both identification and tracking functions. This smart card using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology can be used when students go to school. Reading the machine records, parents can grasp the child's situation even if they are not at the children's side." Through this kind of "smart card" parents can use the reading machine installed at the school gate and other places to read and record the data of the schoolchildren through the machine. Real-time information about school attendance and class after school, or mail, can greatly reduce the risk of child abduction. In Taiwan, black-hearted TVs, black-hearted mattresses, and black-hearted photocopiers have appeared in recent days. Everyone must be careful when buying electricity, fearing to buy fake or old goods. Zhang Ruixiong, a professor of the Department of Capital Engineering, once said: "If we buy RFID chips on the items we buy, then the recycling of old products and the sale of new products may be reduced because they need to remove the old RFID chips from the old products. And embedded in the new RFID chip, if we control the serial number of the RFID chip and the pipeline and route of its distribution, all the old products will not be hidden." If further use in the human body, Zarlink Semiconductor of Canada invented a new Wireless application, the so-called body network Networks) Research in-body antenna design to develop a range of implantable medical components to help the elderly and the disabled. From the printing point of view, in the past few years, "barcode" has been one of the largest businesses of packaging and printing. Nowadays, the emergence of RFID has brought another revolution, not only a breakthrough in technology, but also a test of printers. Courage and creativity, because RFID technology and application are more complex than barcodes, and the range of standards involved is wider. Imagine that the traditional barcodes that were not optimistic at the beginning were also the achievements of today after years of hard work, and brought huge business opportunities to the printing industry. Nowadays, with the emergence of new technology RFID, because printing can greatly reduce the cost of RFID tags, there is a great opportunity for printing to enter this technology and make it popular. I believe that in the near future, RFID will become a new life in the future. the way.