Printed
electronics are expected to meet an increasing demand for
improved functionality and autonomy of products in the context of
Internet-of-Things. With this trend, the environmental performance
of novel technologies is of growing importance. The current study
presents the life cycle assessment of two novel devices: an anticounterfeit
label based on the electrochromic display and a shock-detection tag
based on the piezoelectric sensor, designed for the use in packaging
of pharmaceuticals and luxury items to improve the safety and accountability
in the supply chain. The devices are manufactured by means of energy-efficient
printing techniques on a low-cost flexible and recyclable paper substrate.
Comprehensive cradle-to-grave analysis contributes to industrial-scale
energy and material life cycle inventories and identifies the main
impact hotspots evaluated for a broad range of categories of the ReCiPe
midpoint (H) impact assessment method. Results show that major impact
burdens are associated with the near-field communication chip and
radio-frequency identification antenna, while the impacts of solvents,
process energy, electrochromic display/piezoelectric sensor, Li-ion
battery, and substrate are comparatively small. In terms of their
global warming potential, both the anticounterfeit label and shock-detection
tag embody around 0.23 kg of CO2-equiv. Several material-use
reduction and material-substitution strategies are quantified and
discussed for their potential to reduce high impacts of the antenna.
Sustainability in electronics has a growing importance due to, e.g. increasing electronic waste, and global and European sustainability goals. Printing technologies and use of paper as a substrate enable manufacturing of sustainable electronic devices for emerging applications, such as the multi-layer anti-counterfeit label presented in this paper. This device consisted of electrochromic display (ECD) element, NFC (near field communication) tag and circuitry, all fully roll-to-roll (R2R) printed and assembled on plastic-free paper substrate, thus leading to a sustainable and recyclable device. Our setup uses harvested energy from HF field of a smartphone or reader, to switch an electrochromic display after rectification to prove authenticity of a product. Our novelty is in upscaling the manufacturing process to be fully printable and R2R processable in high-throughput conditions simulating industrial environment, i.e. in pilot scale. The printing workflow consisted of 11 R2R printed layers, all done in sufficient quality and registration. The printed antennas showed sheet resistance values of 32.9±1.9 mΩ/sq. The final yield was almost 1500 fully printed devices, and in R2R assembly over 1400 labels were integrated with 96.5% yield. All the assembled tags were readable with mobile phone NFC reader. The optical contrast (ΔE*) measured for the ECDs was over 15 for all the printed displays, a progressive switching time with a colour change visible in less than 5 s. The smart tag is ITO-free, plastic-free, fully printed in R2R and has a good stability over 50 cycles and reversible colour change from light to dark blue.
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