The temperature monitoring market is predicted to reach more than $3.2 billion by 2020. Growing at 9% annually, this market is driven by a global need to reduce waste and improve safety of perishable goods.
To help ensure that temperature-sensitive products remain safe and effective before sale, retailers use temperature-monitoring labels during shipment of produce and other food products, and pharmaceutical companies use them to help prevent unnecessary destruction of usable products. These temperature monitoring labels, such as the Smart Label, give quick information on product shelf life and efficacy.
Recently, Thin Film Electronics ASA (“Thinfilm”) announced that it has successfully demonstrated a fully functional, stand-alone Smart Sensor Label. The temperature-tracking label, designed for monitoring of perishable goods, demonstrates a complete closed system built from printed and organic electronics.
Noted Davor Sutija, Thinfilm chief executive officer, “The integration of memory and logic creates an extensible platform, on which we will be able to create a variety of low-cost electronics in a label format. Printing provides scale and cost advantages that can’t be matched by other electronic technology.”
According to Christer Karlsson, Thinfilm chief technology officer, “a key breakthrough was the low-voltage complementary logic we announced in June of this year. Polyera and our other materials partners have played an essential role in helping us move products forward.”
In the system, logic built using organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) detects that a critical temperature threshold has been exceeded and signals a display driver to turn on the display. Prior important technical milestones have included:
Six-volt display driver based on complementary organic logic (June 2013)
Memory write based on detection of temperature thresholds (December 2012)
Full addressing logic for multi-bit read-write of printed memory (October 2011)
The company expects to ship products by end of 2014.
Thin Film Electronics ASA
www.thinfilm.no
Filed Under: MOTION CONTROL, SENSORS