Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Caccami, Maria Cristina
• Hogan, Matteo P.
• Alfredsson, Maria
• Marrocco, Gaetano
• Batchelor, John C.

Titel

A Tightly Integrated Multilayer Battery Antenna for RFID Epidermal Applications

Ist Teil von

• IEEE transactions on antennas and propagation, 2018-02, Vol.66 (2), p.609-617

Ort / Verlag

New York: IEEE

Erscheinungsjahr

2018

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

IEEE Xplore

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• For the acceptance of biointegrated devices in daily life, radio systems must be developed, which are minimally invasive to the skin, and they must have ultralow-profile local power sources to support data-logging functionality without compromising shape conformability. This contribution proposes a tightly integrated multilayer battery-antenna system (65 × 23 mm 2 ), that is, ultrathin (just 200 μm), flexible, and lighter than 1 g, making it suitable for epidermal applications. The negative electrode (anode) current collector of the battery is a radio frequency identification tag antenna coated by a conductive polymer (Pedot:PSS) working as anode material. Since the battery is a dynamic device, subjected to discharging, the antenna design must include the variable dielectric properties of the conductive polymer which are here first characterized in the UHF band for real charge/discharge battery conditions. The communication performance of the prototype composite device is hence evaluated through the measurement of the realized gain of the tag antenna (-19.6 dBi at 870 MHz) when it is placed directly onto a volunteer's forearm. The read range of 1.3-3 m is suitable for occasional data download from the epidermal data logger when the user comes close to a reader-equipped gate.