Analysis of the Status of Smart Labels and Printing Technology

The widespread application of traditional bar code labels in all walks of life, and its convenient role and certain anti-counterfeiting functions have become the consensus of people, but with people's higher production, storage and transportation, durability, anti-counterfeiting, management and many other aspects With more comprehensive information requirements, traditional bar code labels are obviously inadequate. Not only are they unable to provide information on product production, management, etc., they cannot warn about the temperature required for product quality guarantees, but also have a single, easy-to-use effect on security. Counterfeit and gradually lose the anti-counterfeiting effect of goods. With the advancement of technology and application in the field of label making, a brand-new, multi-functional, smart label with good anti-counterfeiting effect has begun to be widely used, and it will bring new vitality and vitality to label printing.

First, the characteristics and application of smart tags

SmartLabel is also known as a radio frequency identification tag, which is a high-tech product in the label field. Now it has played an important role in product packaging and gradually replaces traditional product labels and bar codes. Smart Label is a rookie in the field of labels. It has the function of surpassing the traditional labels and is the crystallization of high technology such as electronics and computers printed on the labels. Smart tags include RFID tags, concealed or exposed trademark protection indicators, or sensors that indicate the status of the product. The electronic tag is mainly composed of a chip and an antenna. The chip is mainly used for receiving and transmitting data, and is read through a radio frequency signal sent by a reader. The reader is connected with an antenna and a computer network to form an electronic module, and the reader sends from it. The special signal of the antenna is given to the electronic tag in a specific area, and the feedback information is processed and transmitted to the computer network so that the management personnel can obtain the special information of the product.

Smart labels can help manufacturers and consumers understand the status of commodity inventory, circulation, and shelf life in real time, and play a significant role in monitoring the status and position of their products in the supply chain. For example, the packaging of many foods and medicines must be stored and transported at a specific temperature and in a low-pollution environment. General labels cannot understand and monitor the temperature and shelf life of products stored, and smart labels can be monitored during product storage and transportation. For temperature-sensitive, perishable product temperatures, it uses special chips, antennas, and sensors to measure the temperature during storage and transportation, alerting manufacturers to prevent temperature changes affecting the product. Also, if the warehouse manager can use smart tags to understand the type and quantity of products on the shelves, check the product inventory data to determine the product sales. In addition, smart labels improve the anti-counterfeiting effect of traditional labels, and its anti-counterfeiting capabilities have greatly exceeded traditional bar code labels, especially in pharmaceutical packaging.

The core of the smart tag is a radio frequency circuit and sensor containing an IC chip. A programmable integrated circuit and an antenna are installed inside, and a radio frequency signal and a read-write device can be used to receive and transmit information. Product identification, anti-counterfeit, and theft prevention are provided. Various functions, such as management, are currently used to upgrade and update bar code labels of products. Smart labels have the advantages of being small, thin, and soft (the thickness of the produced product can reach about 0.1mm, and the size is from a few millimeters to nearly twenty centimeters, and can be freely twisted and bent), and the read data information is fast and can be depended on. Special commands read ID numbers and some special information.

Smart tags have anti-collision and read-write features and can read and write multiple electronic tags at the same time. It can carry data, and can quickly read the data stored in its chip through a special card reader wirelessly, and can also easily overwrite its data during the work process. Smart tags can be used without connection, without power, without contact, and can also make rich changes at the radio frequency. In the smart tag, implantable materials of various internal characteristics and readable functions are widely used in the field of wireless identification, such as product identification, quality monitoring, ticketing, asset management, and providing a series of tracking management. Smart labels provide new tools for anti-counterfeiting and logistics management.

The related products of smart labels have a wide application space in the areas of commodity production, storage, transportation, and inventory management for sales. In Japan, Hitachi, Fujitsu, and Toppan Printing Co., Ltd. have mass-produced and marketed smart labels.

According to statistics, Japan’s smart label and related services and software market will reach a level of more than 90,000 yen in 2010. In the United States and Europe, major retailers including Wal-Mart are also striving to promote the use of smart labels. In June 2004, Wal-Mart requested that RFID products be used to manage goods in 2005, requiring that its major 100 suppliers must use smart RFID tags before 2005, and require that most suppliers use the standard within one or two years. Smart tag. According to reports, the production of such smart labels is currently a trend of rapid growth. In Europe, the market reached more than US$5 billion in 2005 and grew at a rate of approximately 40% per year. It is expected that in 2008, the use of RFID tags worldwide will be used. The volume will reach more than 20 billion, when the retail industry will universally apply RFID smart labels.

Second, smart label printing technology

There is a big difference between the printing of smart labels and the printing of traditional labels. At present, the printing technology of traditional labels in our country has a very high level. There are many experienced companies in the trademark printing industry, and many well-designed and high-quality products are also produced. The product, but for the smart label, some people think that it has nothing special, as long as it is covered with a beautiful label on a beautiful coat, which is not difficult for high-quality label printing companies, but simply Adding a smart label with a beautiful coat, its high added value is worrying, otherwise it will cause important losses. So what are the characteristics of smart label printing compared to traditional label printing?

First of all, from the definition of the smart tag, smart is a radio frequency circuit composed of chips, antennas, etc.; and the label is a label printed process that enables the radio frequency circuit to have a commercial outerwear. From a printing point of view, the emergence of smart labels will bring higher gold content to traditional label printing. The chip layer of smart labels can be packaged and printed with materials such as paper, PE, PET, and even textiles to make self-adhesive stickers, paper cards, hanging labels, or other types of labels. The chip is the key to the smart label, which is determined by its special structure and cannot withstand the pressure of the printing press. Therefore, in addition to ink-jet printing, it is generally used to print the surface layer first, and then combine with the chip layer and die-cut process.

(1) Printing method. Screen printing is the first choice for printing, because screen printing can not match the printing quality of integrated circuit boards, membrane switches and other printing methods. In smart label printing, conductive inks are used, and the preferred screen for printing conductive ink is nickel foil perforated mesh. It is a kind of high-tech wire mesh. It is not a wire mesh woven from general metal or nylon wire, but a foil mesh drilled from nickel foil. The mesh is hexagonal and can also be formed by electrolytic forming. Hole shape. The entire surface of the mesh is even and thin, which can greatly improve the stability and precision of imprinting. It is effective for printing high-tech products such as conductive inks, wafers, and integrated circuits. It can resolve the circuit line interval of 0.1 mm and the positioning accuracy can be improved. 0.01mm.

(2) The application of conductive ink. Conductive ink is a kind of special ink. It can add conductive carrier to UV ink, flexographic water-based ink or special offset ink to make the ink conductive. Conductive inks are mainly composed of conductive fillers (including metal powders, metal oxides, non-metals, and other composite powders), linkers (mainly synthetic resins, photosensitive resins, low-melting-point organic glasses, etc.), additives (mainly dispersants, and adjustments). Agents, thickeners, plasticizers, lubricants, inhibitors, etc.), solvents (mainly aromatics, alcohols, ketones, esters, alcohol ethers, etc.). The ink is a kind of functional ink. There are mainly conductive inks such as carbon paste and silver paste in printing. Carbon paste ink is a liquid type thermosetting ink. It has the function of protecting copper foil and conducting current after film curing. It has good conductivity and low resistance force. It is not easy to oxidize, stable performance, acid, alkali and chemical resistance. Erosion of solvents; with strong wear resistance, anti-wear, good thermal shock resistance and so on. Silver paste ink is a one-component ink composed of ultra-fine silver powder and thermoplastic resin. It can be used on PET, PT and PVC sheets. It has strong adhesion and hiding power, can be cured at low temperature, and has controllable Conductivity and very low resistance. In addition, conductive nanometer carbon ink can be added to ink to make conductive ink, and metal powder (such as silver powder) in conductive ink can also be made into nanometer silver powder to make conductive ink. This conductive ink not only prints the film layer. Thin and uniform smooth, excellent performance, but also can save a lot of material.

In smart label printing, conductive inks are mainly used to print RFID antennas, replacing traditional metal foils produced by foiling or etching. It has two main advantages. First of all, the traditional metal foil made by the foiling method or etching method has a complicated process and a long time for the production of the finished product. The application of the conductive ink to print the antenna is a high-speed printing method, which is efficient and fast, and is a printed antenna. The fastest and cheapest method of choice in the circuit. Today, conductive inks have begun to replace etched antennas at various frequency bands, such as ultra-high frequency bands (860 to 950 MHz) and microwave frequency bands (2450 MHz). Antennas printed with conductive ink can be compared to traditionally etched copper antennas. In addition, conductive inks It is also used to print sensors and circuit prints in smart labels. Secondly, metal foils fabricated using conventional foiling or etching methods consume wasted metal materials at a relatively high cost, while the cost of raw materials for conductive inks is lower than that of conventional metal antennas. This has a great impact on reducing the production costs of smart labels. significance.

(3) unique process requirements. Smart label printing has its unique requirements for the production process, and it should mainly pay attention to high yield, thick paper printing and composite processing.

In terms of high yield, since the value of the smart label itself is many times higher than that of an ordinary printed label, it brings high profits to the enterprise, and high yield of printed matter is particularly important. In particular, many products require multi-color UV ink printing, glazing, and gluing. Most of the large-volume labels are also processed by roll-to-roll printing or no-interface printing (through-pass), due to a large number of processing operations. Big difficulty in screening the finished product.

For thick paper printing, in the paperboard processing, it must be noted that the equipment must have good printability for 350-gram-thick paperboard, and the tension of the paper tape should be kept stable in the paper-card printing to ensure that the accumulated printing overlay error is minimized. Therefore, if each frame is overprinted, but the space between the frames has a large error, it will cause troubles for the compounding and die-cutting process after the smart label is printed.

As for composite machining, it is a key process in the processing of smart labels. In the composite processing, not only does the size between each label not change due to tension, but also for film materials, it takes into account the tensile deformation caused by the label spacing Increase and make appropriate adjustments.

Reproduced from: newmaker