Flexible Funketiketten und Systeme (FlexID)
Type of Funding: DFG Programmes, Others
Abstract:
The central goal of the FlexID project is the realization of mechanically flexible, energy-efficient and very cost-effective chip-less radio label systems that allow high operating frequencies up to the 10GHz range. In order to achieve this ambitious goal, the project will combine less intelligent radio labels with a correspondingly highly intelligent readout technology, which requires a significant further development of the current state of the art on both the label and the reader side. For this purpose, a novel printable ultra-fast Si µ-cone Schottky diode will be integrated into a non-linear filter circuit on the radio label in order to shift the backscattered signal spectrum appropriately. Due to the high crystallinity of the µ-cones, the diode concept has a great potential regarding very high operating frequencies. Therefore, working frequencies up to 10 GHz are aimed for in this project. It is expected that the µ-cone thin film will enable FlexIDs with an exceptionally high mechanical flexibility, since this laterally discontinuous µ-structure strongly reduces the mechanical stresses in the semiconductor layer under any mechanical load. In the reader, the integrated non-linearity in the radio tag results in what is in principle perfect spatial echo suppression. This is because the ID-carrying signal differs in frequency from the ambient reflections of the read signal and can therefore be filtered out. In addition, the interrogation by means of time-shifted multi-tone signals enables efficient encoding of the label ID in the available frequency range, which considerably increases the number of encoded bits on the chip-less radio labels. The connection between the technologically oriented work steps for the development of µ-cone-based Schottky diodes and the radio label system development is ensured here by theoretical work. These are based on the development of a parameterized numerical electronic / electromagnetic multi-scale model for the targeted material system. The model provides a kind of numerical test environment that can describe all involved length scales with respect to their functionality. In the micro-scale the simulation of the electronic functionality of the Si µ-structures is aimed at, while in the macro-scale it contributes information to an effective material model, with the help of which the required electrical components can be extracted.
Contact Person at UA Ruhr:
Dr.-Ing. Niels Benson, University of Duisburg-Essen
Prof. Dr. Daniel Erni, University of Duisburg-Essen
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Kaiser, University of Duisburg-Essen
UA Ruhr Researchers:
Prof. Dr. Roland Schmechel, University of Duisburg-Essen