Electronically Rewritable Chipless RFID Tags Fabricated Through Thermal Transfer Printing on Flexible PET Substrates

Abstract

We present an electronically rewritable chipless RFID tag based on integrated nonvolatile Conductive Bridging Random Access Memory (CBRAM) RF switches. CBRAM is a nonvolatile memory technology, which is identified as an innovative RF switching solution in this decade. Reconfigurable resonator or RF encoding particle (REP) used in this tag is a closed-loop resonator integrated with two switches each to tune its electrical length, and encodes three states each, to represent more than one bit per REP. Presented tag is composed of three such REPs to represent a total of 27 unique states. This chipless RFID tag with CBRAM switches could be written/rewritten electronically using DC voltage pulses, to encode a desired code from a given combination. Thermal impression transfer printing is utilized for printing metallic layers of the presented chipless tag. Complete fabrication steps of presented tag with integrated CBRAM switches are carried out without any “clean room” processes. An insight to working mechanism of presented rewritable REPs using electrical models is included in this article. Proof of concept of a potential hybrid data encoding technique combining frequency shift coding and Radar Cross Section (RCS) magnitude level coding, through experimental studies, for presented REPs, is also given herewith.