Manufacturing of antennas for passive UHF RFID tags by direct write dispensing of copper and silver inks on textiles

Abstract

We report for the first time the deposition antennas on textiles using the direct write dispensing of a copper ink. We outline the steps of the dispensing process and share our insight on how to control it on the rough and porous textile surface. The well-known heat sintering is not applicable on copper inks. Below we outline the process of intense pulsed light sintering to form copper based electro-textile. Using the manufactured electro-textile antenna we have assembled a fully functional radio-frequency identification tag. We compare its performance with other tags based on electro-textile antennas manufactured with several other methods and materials.