Global playing card and board game producer Cartamundi, nanoelectronics research centre Imec and Holst Centre — an initiative set up by Imec and Dutch research institute TNO — have unveiled a “world first” NFC tag made entirely out of plastic that offers the chance of “manufacturing chips in large volumes at low cost”.

“This innovative hardware solution of plastic NFC tags opens up several new possibilities for NFC deployments. The new tags can be made much thinner and they are mechanically very robust,” says Imec’s Alexander Mityashin.

“The innovative NFC tag is manufactured in a thin-film transistor technology using indium gallium zinc oxide thin-film transistors (IGZO TFT) on a plastic substrate,” the company adds.

“Plastic electronics offers an appealing vision of low-cost smart electronic devices in applications where silicon chips were never imagined before. Item-level identification, smart food packaging, brand protection and electronic paper are just a few examples. Such new applications will require a continuous supply of countless disposable devices.”

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