Flexible Strain and Temperature Sensing NFC Tag for Smart Food Packaging Applications

Pablo Escobedo,Ravinder Dahiya,Mitradip Bhattacharjee,Fatemeh Nikbakhtnasrabadi

doi:10.1109/jsen.2021.3100876

Abstract

This paper presents a smart sensor patch with flexible strain sensor and a printed temperature sensor integrated with a Near Field Communication (NFC) tag to detect strain or temperature in a semi-quantitative way. The strain sensor is fabricated using conductive polymer poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT: PSS) in a polymer Polydimethylsiloxane microchannel. The temperature sensor is fabricated by printing silver electrodes and PEDOT:PSS on a flexible polyvinyl chloride (PVC) substrate. A custom-developed battery-less NFC tag with an LED indicator is used to visually detect the strain or temperature by modulating the LED light intensity. The LED shows maximum brightness for relaxed or no strain condition, and also in the case of maximum temperature. In contrast, the LED is virtually off for the maximum strain condition and for room temperature. Both these could be related to food spoilage. Swollen food packages can be detected with the strain sensor, serving as beacons of microbial contamination. Temperature deviations can result in the growth or survival of food-spoilage bacteria. Based on this, the potential application of the sensor system for smart food packaging is presented.

Highlights

TECHNOLOGICAL advances in smart sensors and wireless interfaces are bringing the digital and physical worlds closer together through remote monitoring of a wide variety of parameters, finding application in the fields of agriculture, healthcare, etc. [1], [2] These advances have enabled the use of robots during various stages of agriculture or farm produce, such as fruit picking and packaging [3]–[5]
This paper presents a flexible strain sensor and a printed temperature sensor integrated with an Near Field Communication (NFC) tag to detect the temperature and strain in a semi-quantitative and visual way
The resistive strain sensor was fabricated with a flexible polymer PDMS microchannel filled with conductive polymer PEDOT:PSS

Summary

Introduction

TECHNOLOGICAL advances in smart sensors and wireless interfaces are bringing the digital and physical worlds closer together through remote monitoring of a wide variety of parameters, finding application in the fields of agriculture, healthcare, etc. [1], [2] These advances have enabled the use of robots during various stages of agriculture or farm produce, such as fruit picking and packaging [3]–[5]. The use of RFID technology makes it possible to develop batteryfree sensor systems [25] and their use in sensing tags for smart food packaging is attractive [26]. Such tags or smart labels could help mitigate the food spoilage by alerting the consumer or food provider when a product is likely to be or has been compromised [27], [28]. United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that roughly one-third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted worldwide [29] This corresponds to 1.3 billion tonnes of food per year. Smart labels could be useful to provide better estimates of the packaged food quality

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Conclusion