Printed electronics for future secured packaging – PEPS

The battle against counterfeiting has become a major national priority for the French Ministry of Budget, the Colbert Committee as well as on international level with the EU Customs Action Plan set by the EU Council in March 2009. Huge interests are concerned in terms of financial and employment losses and deteriorated image of the Companies. Indeed, counterfeited products, mostly based on low-quality materials and poorly controlled processes, are never submitted to the required legal conformity tests. Besides robustness, such products may also seriously affect the customers safety. The components used in counterfeited products may also lead to recycling problems as the product life cycle is not taken into account during the conception phase. The latest statistics clearly showed the fast expansion of counterfeiting.
The protection of trade marks is nowadays taken very seriously and should be integrated early in the product life cycle, during its design phase. All stakeholders have now agreed that only technology is a position to develop effective tools for the detection of counterfeited products. The ideal solution would be based on a technology very difficult to apply by counterfeiters, and at the same time low-cost and very easy to identify by both control authorities and customers. The main goal of this research project is to demonstrate the scientific feasibility of such a device. The demonstration will be based on the development of a new concept of printed electronics using connected components directly printed on the packaging. This device includes a display to be activated by the energy delivered by a mobile phone placed in near vicinity. Except for the display, the whole printed electronics could be hidden behind an opaque layer applied onto the package through conventional printing.
Each functional building bloc, as well as their assembly, involves technical challenges to overcome, which guaranties the effectiveness of the counterfeiting protection device. The proposed solution is thus difficult to copy and nevertheless low-cost while requiring no specific detection equipment thanks to the use of mobile phones, contrary to current RFID or DNA techniques. Generally speaking, the consortium will work on new materials and processes to ensure enough robustness of both the printed components, using fast deposition techniques of functional inks on paper like Ink Jet and Flexography printing, and their connections throughout the product lifetime. The selected materials and their processing will be submitted to life cycle analyses during the design phase in order to minimise the environmental impact and ensure the recycling ability of the new anti-counterfeiting and security products.
The first target applications address the sector of manufactured products through the integration of the device directly in the packaging. The applications are obviously not be limited to packaging as they should include other sectors such as fiduciary papers, secured medical prescriptions, etc.
In addition, the expected impacts of the project are much large than the mentioned applications, since the research aims at developing cellulose based substrates with high barrier efficiency and top surface properties required for the printing of electronic components. The project will enable demonstrating the technical and industrial feasibility of printed electronics on paper substrate towards the stakeholders and SMEs of the paper industry sector. Eventually the whole paper sector including converting and printing industries will get tools and knowledge that will enable integrating printed electronics in their processes and supply their customers with new products and services.