Fully self-healing UHF RFID tag based on a slot antenna for future skin-like electronics

Abstract

Self-healing functional polymers, blends, and composites provide a compelling approach for fully soft, elastic electronics and wireless sensing technologies. In this paper, we present a numerical analysis of an RFID tag antenna employing a self-healing substrate and conductor with conductivity of ~150 S/m. Despite the lower conductivity comparison with the metallic conductors (~60 MS/m), the flexible tag antenna achieves sufficient radiation performance in the UHF band ranging from 868 MHz to 920 MHz for a functioning RFID tag readable at 2.4 meters distance from the reader. To our knowledge, this is the first self-healing UHF RFID tag for versatile applications including healthcare, wireless communication systems, biomedicine, logistics, and different fields in the manufacturing industry.