Heat-sintered and photonically sintered brush-painted silver UHF RFID tags on plywood substrates

In this abstract, we present ultra high frequency (UHF) radiofrequency identification (RFID) tag antennas that were manufactured by brush-painting silver ink on plywood substrates and sintered photonically and by heat. Wood is a potential environmentally friendly and biodegradable substrate material for various electronic applications. Great potential can be found especially from passive UHF RFID technology that can be embedded into variety of wooden objects. Embedded UHF RFID tags can provide identification and tracking of wooden products throughout their whole lifetime. Heat sintering in an oven is nowadays used in additive manufacturing with success. However, the needed sintering times are long and the needed temperatures are high, which can be problematic to many substrate materials. Photonic sintering uses short light pulses from a flash lamp to heat the ink to a high enough temperature within few milliseconds in ambient conditions. It can be used also with heat sensitive substrate materials. However, finding the right sintering parameters can be challenging.