Towards eco-friendly and cost-effective passive RFID applications

Due to the massive increase in the number of wireless devices, studying the use of cost-effective and environmental-friendly materials to be used together with effective additive manufacturing methods has been a growing trend in electronics during the recent years. Especially graphene materials have a huge potential to revolutionize the fabrication of wireless electronics. In this paper, passive graphene, copper, and silver UHF RFID tags are fabricated on cardboard by brush-painting and doctor-blading techniques and the tag performance is evaluated through wireless tag measurements. The measurements, made under the European RFID transmission regulations, show that the fabricated graphene, copper and silver RFID tags are readable from distances of 5.5, 8.5, and 12 meters, respectively. According to these results, the copper and especially the graphene tags have a great potential to replace the more expensive silver tags in versatile eco-friendly and low-cost wireless applications.

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