HOLST CENTRE REPORTS MAJOR STEP TOWARDS ORGANIC RFID

ISSCC2009, SAN FRANCISCO – FEBRUARY 9, 2009 – At this week’s International
Solid State Circuit Conference, Holst Centre – founded by the Belgian
nanoelectronics research center IMEC and the Dutch research center TNO -
presents world’s first 128 bit organic RFID transponder chip with
Manchester encoding, anti-collision protocol and record high data rate. The
reported RFID transponder chip is a major step towards the application of
organic RFID tags in electronic product coding (EPC).

State-of-the-art organic RFID transponder chips do not yet meet the
specifications of EPC, which is one of the major target applications.
However, with a record data rate of 2kb/s, Manchester encoded data, the
implementation of ALOHA anti-collision protocol to enable readout of
multiple organic RFID tags, a ROM memory capacity of 128 bit and additional
WORM (write-once read-many-times) memory, Holst Centre’s RFID research
demonstrator chip approaches EPC application.

The organic 128b transponder chip is fabricated on a 25µm thin plastic
substrate using organic bottom-gate thin-film transistors. The design of
the chip was limited to p-type only logic. The chip requires a supply
voltage of 20V to 24V which can be generated on a tag equipped with a
plastic double half-wave rectifier and an antenna of 6 to 7 windings.

The transponder chip contains a 33-stage ring oscillator which generates
the clock signal. The clock signal drives the output register, the 3 bit
binary counter and the 16 bit line-select. The 16 bit line-select chooses a
row in the code. A bit in this row is selected by the 8:1 multiplexer,
driven by the 3 bit binary counter. This bit is transported to the output
register, which sends the bit to the Manchester encoder. The latter encodes
the data and sends it to the load modulator of the plastic RFID tag. To
enable the readout of multiple organic RFID tags at once, the ALOHA basic
anti-collision protocol (tag-talks-first protocol) is added to the chip.

The work was done within the framework of the Holst Centre research program
on organic circuitry, in close collaboration between IMEC Leuven and TNO
Eindhoven.

News Release and Photo URL
This news release and a photograph showing Holst Centre’s 128-bit RFID
transponder foil can be downloaded at:
http://www2.imec.be/imec_com/holst_centre_reports_major_step_towards_organi
c_rfid.php?year=2009&month=02

About Holst Centre
Holst Centre is an independent open-innovation R&D centre that develops
generic technologies for Wireless Autonomous Transducer Solutions and for
Systems-in-Foil. A key feature of Holst Centre is its partnership model
with industry and academia around shared roadmaps and programs. It is this
kind of cross-fertilization that enables Holst Centre to tune its
scientific strategy to industrial needs.
Holst Centre was set up in 2005 by IMEC (Flanders, Belgium) and TNO (The
Netherlands) with support from the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and
the Government of Flanders. It is named after Gilles Holst, a Dutch pioneer
in Research and Development and first director of Philips Research.
Located on the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, Holst Centre benefits from
the state-of-the-art on-site facilities. Holst Centre has over 140
employees from 25 nationalities and a commitment from over 20 industrial
partners.
More information: www.holstcentre.com

About IMEC
IMEC is a world-leading independent research center in nanoelectronics and
nanotechnology. IMEC vzw is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, has a sister
company in the Netherlands, IMEC-NL, offices in the US, China and Taiwan,
and representatives in Japan. Its staff of more than 1750 people includes
about 600 industrial residents and guest researchers. In 2008, its revenue
(P&L) was estimated to EUR 264 million.
IMEC’s More Moore research aims at semiconductor scaling towards sub-32nm
nodes. With its More than Moore research, IMEC looks into technologies for
nomadic embedded systems, wireless autonomous transducer solutions,
biomedical electronics, photovoltaics, organic electronics and GaN power
electronics.
IMEC’s research bridges the gap between fundamental research at
universities and technology development in industry. Its unique balance of
processing and system know-how, intellectual property portfolio,
state-of-the-art infrastructure and its strong network worldwide position
IMEC as a key partner for shaping technologies for future systems.
Further information on IMEC can be found at www.imec.be.

Contacts:
Holst Centre: Koen Snoeckx, Communication Manager, T: +31 4 277 40 91,
Koen.Snoeckx {at} holstcentre(.)com

IMEC: Katrien Marent, Director of External Communications, T: +32 16 28 18
80, katrien.marent {at} imec(.)be

For IMEC : Barbara Kalkis, Maestro Marketing & PR, T : +1 408 996 9975,
kkalkis {at} compuserve(.)com