From SCDigest’s OnTarget e-Magazine Printable RFID has Long Been a Goal, and May Finally be Coming into its Own; Monash University Claims Major Breakthrough SCDigest Editorial Staff Are so-called "chipless" RFID tags soon to be the next big thing in the auto ID sector, to the extent of replacing the long-familiar bar code on consumer goods products sold at retail? Maybe be so, according to research coming out of Monash University in Australia this week SCDigest Says: "The fact that chipless tags be printed directly on to products and packaging means they are far more reliable, smaller and cost effective than any other barcoding system," Karmakar says. What Do You Say? First, some background. The ability to create RFID data storage and antenna through some kind of "printing" process has long been a sort of Holy Grail in the RFID industry. That’s in part because for all the talk early on about the "five-cent RFID tag" as being a catalyst for the technology to explode, the reality is that many applications cannot be justified at even a nickel per chip. Consumer goods to retail is the most prominent example of that reality, for which the familiar GTIN code (formally the UPC) printed on a package, label or tag is virtually free. That’s a lot less than five cents. Barcodes on packaged goods could soon be a thing of the past with the rapid expansion of chipless tags, and Monash University researchers are at the forefront of developing this technology, it was announced this week. RFID tags that do not contain a silicon chip are called chipless tags, naturally enough. The potential promise of these chipless tags is that they could be printed directly on products and packaging for 0.1 cents and "replace ten trillion barcodes yearly with something far […]