Sustainable Digital Fabrication of Low Energy Passive Wireless Sensors

该项目涉及制造令人兴奋的新无线传感技术的新方法。我们的数字未来和物联网应用于智能建筑、国土安全、石油和天然气行业、辅助生活和医疗保健、农业、运输和环境监测。研究已经在智能包装中进行，以无线方式指示食品何时变质;防篡改的光敏标签;检测爆炸物的标签;或用于生物医学应用的汗液和pH传感器，以评估最近的手术如何愈合。这些新技术中的传感器必须小、薄、非常便宜。此外，不需要电池将减少成本和对环境有害的化学品的需求。在本项目中，我们将研究具有全球意义的两个领域的传感技术：（i）食品安全和（ii）国家安全/生物传感。在第一个应用中，粮食安全（即稳定和可持续地向发达国家和发展中国家的人口提供充足的粮食）将随着全球人口的增加和粮食价格的上涨而变得至关重要。目前大约有30-40%的食物被浪费，对收获后储存技术的需求日益增加，影响到小规模贸易商、分销商、供应商和消费者。减少发达国家的废物尤其具有挑战性，这与文化态度和生活方式有关。在英国，以下行业占总废物的不同比例：农场：15%，运输/加工：25%，零售：10%，食品服务：15%，家庭和市政：35%。智能包装检测食品从农场包装到消费者存储的分解，可以显著影响链中所有环节的浪费，尽管人们正在寻求技术，以最大限度地减少对供应商和客户的成本和基础设施的影响。第二个应用是身体穿戴和生物传感，其中身体和皮肤安装的无线传感器在安全，紧急服务，医疗/健康用途。然而，像警察这样的组织一直在努力采用现有的和经过修改的现成技术，而不是从头开始开发基础设施。例如，智能手机现在被允许用于武装部队的某些用途，国防部的黑莓手机已被用于机密电子邮件访问。这里提出的用于快速开发和制造的技术不需要独特的新构建，因为它们可以添加到支持NFC RFID的智能手机和商业RFID阅读器中。在所有应用中，无电池无线传感器制造对于更换成本和环境问题（例如材料的提取和寿命结束时的处置）具有显著的益处。此外，在国家和全球范围内采用这一新兴传感领域也存在障碍，因为许多当前技术都是对传统无线、电力存储和传感解决方案的改编。我们提出了一种新的方法，将数字制造工艺应用于新型无源无线传感，以产生改变游戏规则的影响，降低成本和浪费，并克服大规模采用的障碍。将使用的数字制造是喷墨打印，我们不仅将拉伸和弯曲的金属轨道打印到弹性聚合物基底上，还将对基底进行修改，使其对某些化学品敏感。最后，我们还将探索如何打印聚合物基板本身，使整个标签金属天线和传感底座能够通过喷墨制造。

This project concerns new ways of fabricating exciting new wireless sensing technologies. Our Digital Future and The Internet of Things have application in intelligent buildings, homeland security, oil and gas industries, assisted living and healthcare, agriculture, transport and environmental monitoring. Research is already being carried out in Intelligent packaging to indicate wirelessly when food is deteriorating; tamper-proof light-sensing tags; labels that detect explosives; or sweat and pH sensors for biomedical applications that assess how a recent operation is healing. The sensors in these new technologies must be small, thin and very cheap. Also, not needing a battery will reduce cost and the need for chemicals which are bad for the environment.In this project we will investigate sensing technologies two areas of global significance: (i) Food Security and (ii) National Security/Bio-sensing. In the first application, Food Security, (i.e. the stable and sustainable provision of sufficient food to the populations of developed and developing countries) will become critically important with expanding global populations and increasing food prices. Roughly 30-40% of all food is currently wasted with an increasing need for postharvest storage technologies effecting small scale traders, distributers, vendors and consumers. Reducing waste in developed countries is particularly challenging and is linked to cultural attitudes and lifestyle. In the UK the following sectors account for various proportions total waste: Farms: 15%, Transport/processing: 25%, Retail: 10%, Food service: 15%, Home & municipal: 35%. Smart packaging which detects food breakdown from farm pack house to consumer storage can significantly impact on this wastage at all parts in the chain though technologies are sought that will minimise the cost and infrastructure impact on suppliers and customers.The second application is for bodyworn and bio-sensing where body- and skin-mounted wireless sensors have significant potential for monitoring of vital signs in security, emergency services, and medical/health use. However, there is a continuing drive for organisations such as the police to adopt existing and modified off-the-shelf technologies rather than developing infrastructure from scratch. For instance, smart phones are now permitted for certain uses by the armed forces and the MoD Blackberry has been adopted for classified email access. The technologies proposed here for rapid development and manufacture do not require unique new-builds as they enable add-ons to NFC RFID enabled smart phones and commercial RFID readers. In all applications, battery-free wireless sensor fabrication has significant benefits for replacement cost and environmental issues such as extraction of materials and disposal at end of life. Also, barriers exist to national and global adoption of this emerging sensing area because many current technologies are adaptations of conventional wireless, power storage and sensing solutions. We propose a new approach where digital fabrication processes are applied to novel passive wireless sensing to lead to game changing impact, reduced costs and wastage, and to overcome the barriers to large scale adoption. The digital fabrication to be used is Inkjet printing, and we will not only print stretching and bending metal tracks onto elastic polymer substrates, but also modify the substrates to make them sensitive to certain chemicals. Finally, we will also explore how to print the polymer substrate itself, enabling the entire tag metal antenna and sensing base to be fabricated by inkjet.