Labels and Intelligent Products

One of the great advantages of printed electronics is its ease of integration into products or packages. For example, thin and flexible products can be applied to flexible package materials by laminating or labelling or by direct application. Thus, in a first step it is possible to apply labels with printed electronics (e.g. as an RFID tag or as a display element) on a product. The next step will be that printed electronics will be integrated directly into the package and thus realize "intelligent or smart products", that means products that can communicate through their RFID tag with a respective reader. Hereby, the vision of ubiquitous computing or also called "internet of things" will be made possible, e.g. as an intelligent fridge or washing machine, an intelligent shopping cart in the supermarket or a better automation in production processes.