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Belgian Company Develops Pentacene-Based Technology for Product Tagging

Posted on: Thursday, 18 August 2005, 18:00 CDT

Text of report by "rmg": "IMEC developing technology to replace bar codes"; publbished by Belgian newspaper De Standaard website on 18 August

Brussels: The IMEC [Interuniversity Microelectronics Research Centre] has developed a technology that may eventually replace bar codes. The use of special materials may reduce the cost of replacing bar codes by microchips.

For years electronics companies have been trying to develop RFID technologies. RFID stands for radio frequency identification and involves the tagging of individual products in supermarkets, for instance. It uses radio waves to read data stored on miniature chips attached to each product.

The technology offers many advantages, but companies have so far been reluctant to introduce it because chips are much more expensive than traditional bar codes. This high cost is mainly attributable to the silicon that is used to produce chips. So far, the use of alternative materials has not been taken into consideration because these are not able to receive high-frequency radio wages.

IMEC, the Louvain-based semiconductor research centre, has now found a solution. It has shown that the expensive silicon can be replaced by pentacene, a much cheaper material. By reducing the thickness of the pentacene component to a level thick enough to prevent the material from emitting sparks, IMEC managed to use it in high-frequency RFID applications. IMEC's research results have been published in the August issue of the Nature Materials magazine.

In the laboratory, the technology was implemented in power supplies of chips. Power supplies convert the incoming radio signals into low-voltage currents that supply the other components with energy. "We have now proved that the technology works at the laboratory level," IMEC Departmental Chief Paul Heremans said. "Now we have to examine possible commercial applications and the technology's integration with other components. But, technologically speaking, we have jumped the main hurdle."

IMEC's research was conducted within the scope of a European project investigating RFID applications. The German company PolyIC, a joint venture involving Siemens and the Kurz printing business, is a commercial partner in this project.

Heremans thinks it will take some more years for the results of his research to emerge in shops.

Source: BBC Monitoring European

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