Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CAPID (Capacitive Identification Tokens)

Teaser

In January 2017, six companies from four European countries joined forces to develop a brand new technology that makes a digital connection between paper products and electronics devices. CAPID, an acronym for ‘capacitive identification’, is a printed electronic tag that...

Summary

In January 2017, six companies from four European countries joined forces to develop a brand new technology that makes a digital connection between paper products and electronics devices. CAPID, an acronym for ‘capacitive identification’, is a printed electronic tag that interacts with capacitive touchscreen devices.
For more than 1000 years paper has been one of the most used information carriers. An obvious, static and very physical way of sharing content. Today we see dynamic digital content provided on smartphones or tablets connected to the Internet of Things (IoT). CAPID brings the best of two worlds together enabling connected paper.
Application developers working on products and systems for the IoT can make use of several connectivity options. A very common option today is near-field radio frequency communication, also known as RFID or NFC. An NFC capable reader has been introduced in many recent Smartphones. The number of IoT participating devices is therefore mainly defined by the growth of the NFC-enabled smartphone market.
The project aims for a disruptive change, bringing a basic, NFC-like communication capability to every device that has a touchscreen. And this is without the need for a special reader. This is an opportunity to increase the number of IoT participating devices dramatically.
CAPID introduces ‘C-tokens’, a new communication technology that uses capacitive coupling between ubiquitous touch screen displays, the reader, and low-cost electronic objects: the ‘tokens’. By placing the tokens on a touchscreen, a capacitive communication link is established. The touch screen will be used to energize the tokens, that way they do not require batteries. The electronic backbone of these tokens is formed by amorphous oxide transistor circuits on ultra-thin plastic substrates embedded in paper products, that’s why we call it ‘connected paper’.
Thanks to the very low cost and specific functionality CAPID will strengthen the portfolio of near-field communication solutions available to developers. Right from the start of this RIA project, three exploitation and commercialization cases will be investigated; ticketing, payment and board game industries. This will guide the technical developments and facilitate quicker market deployment after the project.

Work performed

The first year of the project has focused on defining the application requirements for the new technology, as well as on the engineering feasibility of these requirements.
Presenting CAPID technology to the business world will be done by 3 demo applications envisaged in the project. End-user and consumer centered market research led to R&D and product specifications for CAPID tags and demonstrators.
A number of fundamental technological challenges were studied to demonstrate the overall feasibility of the capacitive communication concept in thin-film transistor technology. Experimental lab studies were combined with basic system level modeling to assess the power consumption of CAPID tokens featuring various functionalities required by the applications. Further, power consumption was optimized using a selection of engineering strategies. As a result, a 30x reduction in the power consumption compared to the state-of-the-art of oxide thin-film transistor chips was demonstrated. This power consumption was benchmarked against the limits of power harvesting from a touchscreen device. A decision was taken about what power harvesting mechanism will be used in project demonstrators. As lab scale tests were completed, guidelines were developed about transferring the CAPID chip development into a pilot-line manufacturing environment of the consortium partners. Using a pilot-line setting allows for a larger scale demonstration and test by the application partners of the consortium.
Thin-film chips were prepared an converted into a formfactor for integration in mass market integration facilities.
Hardware does not run without software and is an important work package within the consortium. Without any real product available emulator devices were created to allow the parallel software development and investigation of touchscreen behavior for various devices available in the market.
As from the start of the project, exploitation and commercialization are not forgotten. Several business cases were assessed to bring CAPID R&D to CAPID business as fast as possible.

Final results

This is the first time capacitive communication tags are attempted using a thin-film transistor technology. Preliminary estimates concluded the need for a significant reduction of the power of integrated circuits made of such thin-film transistors, about 100x lower compared to the state-of-the-art. Technology and design work on low-power building blocks in the first year of the project has already yielded a 30x reduction. Co-optimization of power harvesting and power consumption will continue in the second part of the project, setting a target of battery-free demonstrators in the end of the third year.
The project aims for a seamless integration of electronics into paper cards. From a look and feel point of view the products with and without chips should be nearly identical. The achieved thickness, stiffness and components are a quality beyond the state-of-the-art. Big focus will lay on scaling the lab parameters for CAPID integration up to industrial standards. A low additional cost is an important requirement. The chosen manufacturing method will fit current paper converting lines allowing the fastest supply chain possible.
The 3 applications represent a broad spectrum of technical requirements. The board game demonstrator will focus on identification, location and angular tracking with a very low cost taken into account. The ticketing demo will put an emphasis on a vast number of different tags and fast data throughputs whereas a payment concept will require high security standards and bi-directional communication.
The tags will allow traditional product to be blended with immersive content such as video, sound, security and other multi-media. CAPID can be a game changer for paper products with embedded electronics.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.capid.eu.