European group researches polymer RFID chips

Several electronics manufacturers and research institutes in Europe have joined forces in a European Union-funded project aimed at developing low-cost, polymer-based electronic circuits.

The project, called PolyApply, will focus, among other things, on developing plastic chips for RFID (radio frequency identification) applications, Richard Stockdill, a spokesman for STMicroelectronics NV (ST), said Thursday. The French-Italian chip maker is leading the project.

As part of its Sixth Research, Technological Development and Demonstration Framework Programme, the European Commission is providing €12 million ($15 million) to a group of 20 chip makers and research organizations to initiate the development project, slated to run to the end of 2007.

The partners include Sweden’s Acreo AB, Germany’s Infineon Technologies AG and Siemens AG and Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV in the Netherlands.

The group has coined the term “ambient intelligence” to define the general focus of its work. The goal is to integrate a variety of electronic functions, such as sensing, computing and information storage, into a wide range of materials, including consumer packaging, and to enable all these to communicate via low-cost radio frequency technology, according to Stockdill.

Polymer-based electronic systems will play a key role. In developing these new technologies, researchers and engineers in the group will aim to apply existing system and circuit-design expertise gained from their work on advanced silicon systems to new materials and devices that can be manufactured at substantially lower cost, Stockdill said.

Although silicon technology has underpinned most advances in electronic devices and applications for many decades and will continue to play a key role over the next 10 years, many new applications can only be achieved with new technologies such as polymer electronics, which are inherently much less expensive than silicon, Gianguido Rizzotto, general manager of ST’s soft-computing, silicon optics and post-silicon technologies group, said in a statement.

One these applications could be the ability to print RFID chips on consumer packaging, according to Stockdill.

Numerous retailers around the world are eager to see the development of low-cost RFID chips that they can use to replace bar codes.

Germany’s Metro AG, the fifth largest retailer in the world, is currently conducting one of the sector’s largest pilot tests of RFID technology. For the retail giant to deploy RFID chips economically, the price will have to come down to around €0.02 euros from current prices ranging between €0.30 and €0.60, said Gerd Wolfram, project manager of Metro’s Future Store Initiative.