Design and Development of a RFID Assisted Flexible Printed Temperature Threshold Indicator

Abstract

Vaccines and cold food supply chains induce loss, costing millions of Euros due to heat exposure in logistics. Therefore, this study aims to create a smart, green, biodegradable temperature indicator label for smart packaging to indicate heat exposure. First, conductive (silver) interconnects and HF RFID antenna are printed using Aerosol Jet Printing (AJP) on fibre-based substrates. Next, a self-formulated polyaniline ink (non-conducting) is deposited with AJP. Using a temperature-dependent mechanism, an acid is used as a stimulus, which subsequently transforms the non-conducting polyaniline ink into conductive ink (visualised by turning the blue color of the ink into green). Finally, this reaction can be read out with an RFID reader. This proof of concept could in the future be laminated and tested as a TTI label on a card box for smart (e)-packaging.