“Touch the surrounding, it will tell you everything!”
You’ll just need to touch food packaging to get the full list of ingredients in one go. If you’re allergic to anything among the contents, you’ll receive a warning.
“Applied to packaging, and when touched by hand, sensors can send a signal through the body to our smartphone and, for example, alert us should we be allergic to any of the contents. The goal is to launch the technology and reach the market in the future. This cooperative project is being run by Linköping University, Acreo Swedish ICT and Ericsson,” he explains.
There is a societal need to monitor and examine things. The contents on packaging are just one example. There is also a need to monitor people, but in a positive way. A diagnostics computer on a small label in a plaster could act as a small contribution to mankind, enabling many hospital examinations to be avoided. Instead, medical tests and medical care could be supplemented at home using sensors in the plaster on our bodies that can monitor and transmit signals about our health to a central medical center, which then provides a diagnosis.
“This offers major societal gains that can help ensure that we have the resources to finance medical care in the future too.”
Magnus Berggren shows a sensor with printed electronics in one of the most advanced forms currently available. Here, a silicon chip and sensors are printed and integrated on a paper surface.
“We’ve manufactured sensors for certain chemical parameters to monitor stress hormones in blood and to monitor glucose sensors. We have also produced UV sensors that are applied to clothes to measure ultraviolet radiation.”
The team has developed these sensor platforms with electronic patterns, displays, silicon chips and batteries in the laboratory in Norrköping, Sweden. They suspected that the products would generate great interest. However, they were taken aback by the level of global demand for the technology that uses diagnostics and sensors.
“About fifteen years ago, I dreamed of a future for displays, communications and sensors on paper and board. Since then, smartphone development has permitted a great deal more, allowing us to apply these sensors to goods.” Magnus continues.
Some 20 machines are located in Acreo’s laboratory. This is not a research unit, but instead it houses full-scale production equipment. This is the manufacturing site, but it also includes research tools to develop innovative technologies and equipment for bioelectronics. Some of this equipment is too small and Magnus Bergren is awaiting delivery of larger equipment for more efficient production. Here, we find milling machinery from the Germany-based Mühlbauer, a globally leading company in production lines for RFID tags. The machinery has been upgraded by Acreo to suit the company’s pattern technology and been patented. Large milling machines for the manufacture of electronic circuit boards have replaced yesterday’s technique of etching fixed antennas, a time-consuming and environmentally hazardous process that slowly ate its way through a material. Instead, a metal foil is milled at a rate of 200 meters per minute to attain the antenna pattern. These custom-built machines from Acreo, which are now integrated in Mühlbauer’s product range, are expected to generate major sales worldwide.
Another machine, which assembles 60,000 silicon chips per hour, is also on the way to the facility. Featuring a generic sensor platform and integrated computer, it can be used to print diagnostic labeling. It is primarily aimed at home medical care, but can be used essentially in all applications relating to diagnostics and sensors.
Acreo worked previously with an ID technology for which the concept was to print electronic patterns on surfaces on which a single sensor could gauge RFID and invisible barcodes. The company focused on this but made mistakes with the patent; nowadays, however, it works more efficiently.
“Barcodes are essential in today’s logistics. There’s hardly a box that doesn’t have a barcode. But for manufacturing companies the value is minimal. Working with societal-changing diagnostics as we do today is more difficult but offers a greater value and far higher margins,” notes Magnus.
He believes that the plaster will provide these higher margins, although volumes may be low initially.
“I think that patients may be prepared to pay a few hundred Swedish kronor to check, for example, stress hormones using sensor plasters, if it is linked to medical treatment for some stress-reduction therapy. Nowadays, patients must be supervised by a medical center, perhaps once a month, at a very high cost. Moreover, the data volume the patient receives in connection with each visit is rather limited. At home, it’s possible to access much larger data volumes. I believe governments and individuals are prepared to invest and pay for this.”
These large data volumes generated by sensor platforms will primarily be applied to paper surfaces.
“It’s not just a matter of cost, but paper is inexpensive to print on at high speed, which makes it advantageous. Legislation and the manufacturing industry impose ever-higher demands that sensors are printed on paper for environmental reasons. Paper is recyclable and plays a natural role in the ecocycle.”
Certain technologies are also most suitable for paper. For example, ion-based electric transistors work at low voltages and don’t require extremely thin layers. There’s little problem using conventional printing and, according to Magnus, today’s printing industry can easily modify its printing machinery to turn out these electronic systems on paper.
“We use the same design parameters and systems to make templates and prints. They just need to change the graphic ink. Electronics on paper can be produced in a high process flow, in approximately the volumes to which printing firms are accustomed. I think printing firms will gain renewed growth,” he says.
However, volumes are low as yet. You can’t entirely replace graphic production. On the other hand, German printers have made more progress. They are converting their lines for printed electronics. The paper and printing sectors in Dresden operate in symbiosis. Kurtz, a printing group, is part of this environment and has been very successful in upgrading its machinery.
“Unfortunately, the Swedish printing industry and paper manufacturers have been too slow in accepting this concept. Swedish engineering skills are superb, but the industry has not been very successful on the management side in terms of risk taking. The German paper industry is far more aggressive and driven. We have much more cooperation with the German industry than its Swedish equivalent, with which we hardly work at all,” says Magnus.
Some of the displays described, and which Acreo currently sells, cost very little to manufacture. The license cost is about one Swedish krona. Soon, such low costs will be achieved that the displays can be included in packaging and advanced plasters.
Market analysts believe that the number of items, primarily goods, connected to the Internet will amount to 5-10 billon within ten years compared with the current approximately 15 million goods. Once these have been used, some 5-10 billion new goods will be connected.
“So, if the paper industry wants to jump on an industry trend, this is definitely one.”
Mikael Hedlund