Flexible Radio Frequency IDentification Tags and System (FlexID)

• Applicants: Professor Dr.-Ing. Niels Benson; Professor Dr. Daniel Erni; Professor Dr.-Ing. Thomas Kaiser
• Subject Area: Electronic Semiconductors, Components and Circuits, Integrated Systems, Sensor Technology, Theoretical Electrical Engineering
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 317157420

It is the main goal of FlexID to realize a truly mechanically flexible low-power and ultra-low-cost chipless RFID tag system, which allows for operating frequencies up to the 10GHz range. To fulfill this ambitious goal, the project combines non-smart tag- with smart reader-technology which requires stepping beyond the state of the art on both sides of the system. On the tag side a novel printable ultra-fast Si µ-cone based Schottky diode structure is going to be integrated into a frequency notch based RFID tag circuit, in order to modulate the tags backscatter frequency. This diode concept has the potential for ultra-high frequency operation, aiming at the 10GHz range, due to a high Si µ-cone crystallinity. At the same time the discontinuous µ-cone arrangement will make a FlexID with an expected exceptionaly high mechanical flexibility possible, as the innovative structure will significantly reduce mechanical stress in the active semiconductor layer during mechanical elongation of any kind. On the reader side, the nonlinear tag principally allows a perfect clutter suppression since the interfering reader signal reflections caused by the environment can be well separated from the desired backscattered signal carrying the tag ID simply by filtering. Moreover, time-shifted multi-tone signals can be exploited in order to boost the possible number of bits for chipless RFID systems by encoding the ID over an UltraWideBand (UWB) frequency range. The link between technological laboratory work for the Si µ-cone development and the RFID system design will be given by modeling efforts to develop a parametrized numerical electronic / electromagnetic multi-scale model for the Si µ-cone based material system. This model will provide a first-principle simulation test bench with predictive power that aims at both directions of the involved length scales. On the one hand, it will be apt to describe the electronic functionality of the Si µ-structures, while on the other hand, it will contribute to an effective material model that allows the extraction of reliable (macroscopic) electronic components.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Roland Schmechel